Articles
GS1 opens door to small business savings (March 2006)
By combining GS1 identifiers and barcodes with a new point of sale (POS) system, the familyowned business The Door Store expects to decrease inventories, reduce out of stocks, cut the time spent on stock takes and as a result allow salespeople to spend more time selling.
The Door Store's ambitious goals make sense in the light of the operational changes it has planned with GS1 Australia's Professional Services team and one of GS1 Australia's Alliance Partners. The plan takes The Door Store from using a purely manual stock control process and point of sale system to automatic data capture (barcode scanning) as part of everyday operations.
As one of Melbourne's leading retailers of doors and accessories, The Door Store carries 6500 stock keeping units, ranging from doors through to grub screws. According to The Door Store's System Administrator, Sarah Casey, under the current system, supplier representatives and the company's Hardware Manager Mark Polson maintain stock levels with a skilled eye.
"Mark tries to keep track of what's selling and what's not and, when it's time to re-order, he goes out into the warehouse to get a visual indication of stock levels," she said. "With so many lines and the sheer volume of stock, it's an enormous responsibility for one person."
The product range's breadth also impacts on the salesforce. Currently, each sale is a time consuming manual process, with sales people required to identify the items being sold, rite up the details in a cash book and calculate discounts for special accounts.
"Training is a huge issue because salespeople must recognise thousands of items," Sarah said. "Manual systems were adequate when The Door Store was much smaller but we've outgrown them and can save time and money with a more sophisticated system."
After the required operational changes were identified, The Door Store's first step was to organise the bar coding of stock. By using bar codes, the requirement for staff to be able to visually identify items will be removed and the time taken to complete a sale will be substantially reduced. In addition, inventory levels will be able to be maintained electronically.
GS1 Australia's Member and Industry Support Team helped Mark draft a letter to suppliers asking them to apply GS1 BarCodes at each packaging level.
"GS1 Australia's assistance was invaluable and took the burden from us while we were busy implementing changes," Sarah said. "It's great to know they're always there to help us move to the next stage."
As Supply Chain LINK went to press, The Door Store was approaching what Sarah called "D-day", when the new POS system went live.
"It's been a long but worthwhile process," Sarah said. "With our salespeople spending less time as cashiers and more time on the floor, plus fewer out of stocks, sales should increase. The data captured during each sale and the new reporting tools will put the information we need at our fingertips so there'll be less buffer stock and we hope that this year, we'll be able to do stocktake electronically."
