Discount Retailer Quarterly Inventories

A leading discount retailer in the UK has grown to over 500 stores, and employs over 28,000 staff. Over 4 million customers visit the stores a week, across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Departments include home, garden, back to school, toys, food, health and beauty.

REQUIREMENT
The national discount retailer wanted to accurately analyze the inventory levels within over 500 stores. The retailer needed the technology and staff for large scale quarterly inventories and due to the use of auto ordering, accuracy was paramount to the retailer.

The national discount retailer required RGIS to provide the following:

  • Accurate quarterly inventories for all stores with data analytics
  • To ensure internal PI checks are correctly executed between inventories
  • To reduce the need for store staff to conduct internal inventories

SOLUTION
The national discount retailer partnered with RGIS to complete the quarterly inventory project, and RGIS provided the following:

  • Quarterly wall to wall inventories to ensure inventory accuracy, completed every 8-13 weeks by experienced local RGIS teams
  • Dedicated Supervisors with customer specific online training, which had to be completed before running an inventory.
  • Procedures updated weekly during initial on boarding
  • Recruitment and instore training for the core dedicated team
  • Regular Account Manager attendance to ensure all processes were adhered to
  • Tablet checking developed from initial RDA checks to targeted department checks and random checks— minimum 30% of areas checked
  • Tablet based variance checks for increased accuracy – this started as one big list and developed to targeted department checks by value, decreasing check time while increasing accuracy
  • Dashboard created for analytics of the data

RESULTS
The national discount retailer found by outsourcing the quarterly inventory project to RGIS the following results were achieved:

  • Accuracy increased and there was a reduction in overstocks, due to more accurate inventory counts
  • Checks were accurate and efficient, due to the department targets
  • Reduced shrink levels
  • Staff morale increased, as less resource needed for inventories
  • Gained two more regions from a competitor after 12 weeks, due to the superior process and service