CASE STUDY - US RETAILER

Our Client is a national retailer operating over 3,000 stores throughout North America. RGIS expanded its long and productive relationship with this Client and introduced Smartspace®, allowing the Client to plan asset location and movement from supply chain through optimal location. The result was increased profitability, efficiency and control—at the global, regional and store levels.

With a significant US presence, the Client maintains regional operations and planning centers.  To increase operational efficiency and introduce greater performance insight, the Client was interested in a centralized planning solution that could accommodate global, regional, and store-specific space planning.

The solution would have to support the creation of accurate and detailed multi-dimensional company-wide and individual store layouts.  Store planning historically was a manual process that drove significant time and cost.  Centralized planning would have to include fixture-level specification so that tight control could be established and maintained.  Ensuring compliance to corporate-defined layout definition was also an objective, given the considerable geographic presence.

Centralizing operations would also need to include data collection and analysis, enabling the Client to analyze and report micro and macro trends to best exploit identified opportunities.

Finally, the client had made significant investment in systems and software, so the new solution would have to integrate with those existing systems.

RGIS had a long and productive relationship with the Client, having conducted numerous inventories over a period of years.  Leveraging this working knowledge of the Client's business and operations, RGIS tailored a comprehensive solution that met the wide-ranging requirements.

The solution RGIS defined included Smartspace®, a fully-integrated, turnkey suite of macro space planning solutions.  The Client purchased a number of RGIS' Smartspace® licenses together with an RGIS Central Store Database so that collected data would be effectively assembled, stored, and analyzed.

Bundled together, the solution would support all stated requirements including:  efficient, centralized operations; planning based on analytic-driven insights; global, regional, and single store layout definition, and seamless technology integration. 

RGIS combined its long history of industry expertise, deep knowledge of the Client's business, and proven implementation methods, to introduce the benefits of Smartspace® through six progressive efforts:

• Category space allocation to ensure that each category had appropriate assignment in proportion and location.

• Product line space allocation provided additional detail and planning insight.
  

• Planogram creation and adjacency control with Smartspace® proprietary software built highly-detailed 3-dimensional store layouts which enabled visualization and placement strategy.

• Product flow and placement allowed the Client and RGIS to plan the customer experience.

• Process workflows were defined to support collaboration across multiple departments and locations.  This enabled buy-in from various departments that could now appreciate the coordinated and integrated approach that supported both division and corporate success.

• Definition of key metrics and creation of detailed reporting so that plans could be iteratively improved based on new learnings, seasonal and promotional requirements, and local and global successes.

The RGIS team also defined the structure and content of the RGIS Central Store Database and populated the new system with data relevant to the client's business needs.

Once RGIS had normalized and integrated data for analysis, reports were generated that provided key insights to global, regional, and store performance. 

RGIS' partnership with the Client delivered Smartspace® on time and within budget, due in large part to the exclusive focus on objectives to improve insight and efficiency.

The Client immediately realized operational, cost, and profitability benefits following introduction of the RGIS Smartspace® solution, including:

• Immediate increased profitability from segmented store-level insight:  new data-driven insights supported the definition of store clusters—locations across the footprint with similar profiles.  Based on this insight, these stores could be managed uniformly by applying success realized in one to others in the cluster. 

• Compressed response time introduced by Smartspace® meant opportunities were recognized and pursued with greater speed and precision.

• Enhanced performance reporting by zone, store, cluster, location, adjacency, and/or fixture supported refined planning and refits based on aggregated or selected performance.  With immediate access to performance insights, the Client was able to directly respond to opportunities, increasing revenue and reducing costs. 

• Greater level of control through the centralized operations RGIS introduced drove measurable efficiency across the organization.  By having a core team review results, define plans and placement, manage assets, and oversee compliance, costs were contained and the Client's brand identity was strengthened through the new uniformity.