THE HOME DEPOT’S HOMETOWN OF ATLANTA DISCUSSES THE RETAILER’S TECH EDGE

Atlanta news station 11Alive (NBC) sat down Sunday with The Home Depot’s Sr. Director of Digital Strategy & Mobile Applications, Matt Jones, about how the company uses technology to enhance in-store and online customer experiences.

Says Mr. Jones about the retailer’s mobile app, the latest strategy has been to help the customer navigate in the store while shopping. The app also gives consumers the ability to read product ratings and look up detailed product information while looking at products in the aisle, enhancing the shopping experience.

“One of the challenges is being able to visualize how the products will look in your home, “says Mr. Jones. “A door could be an example, a patio set could be an example.”  

When asked how the use of technology has impacted sales, the bottom line and overall efficiencies within the organization, Mr. Jones says the blending of the in-store and digital experiences has definitely been a driver of sales success.

Who is The Home Depot’s tech consumer? “We’ve got a very diverse customer base, from the professional customer…to the customer buying home décor…to the customer doing a DIY project at home.” This year marks the biggest wholesale change to the mobile app in years.

There are a few things Home Depot is focused on for 2017 according to Mr. Jones: giving customers a way to personalize their app and online shopping to focus on their interests. He feels that the faster you can get a consumer to the information they want and will find most valuable is the key to success.

Source: 11Alive.com 

HOME DEPOT TURNS STORES INTO MINI DISTRIBUTION CENTERS

The Home Depot announced a 6.6% increase in revenue and a 9.3% increase in net profit to $2.4 billion.

The retailer stated that customers are taking advantage of their new options for retrieving their ecommerce orders. In the second quarter, about 42% of Home Depot’s online orders and almost 90% of its online returns were handled by its stores.

Ecommerce sales were just 5.6% of Home Depot’s sales in the second quarter, but were up 19% from a year ago, showing significantly higher growth in sales than in-store. Home Depot is choosing now to invest in infrastructure and order management software to address ecommerce fulfillment from their stores. Online purchases can now be delivered from over 700 stores, faster and with shorter scheduled-delivery windows than possible before.

Source: Wall St. Journal

TAKEAWAYS FROM ACCELERATED ANALYTICS’ GS1 CONNECT 2016 SESSION: ‘The Importance and Value of Data Sharing – Using Point-of-Sale Data to Deliver Outstanding Customer Experiences’

I had the opportunity to lead this session last week and came back with some takeaways that I wanted to share, as I feel they are reflective of the state of retail today and how retailers and vendors are using point-of-sale data to manage their business in this time of OMNI-channel, customer-experience driven retail.

Customers want a single-vision of brands and be able to have a consistent, complete and winning experience every time they shop, in whatever channel they shop in. To ensure products are available when and where the customer shops, retailers need real-time inventory visibility, a seamless order management system and the ability to deliver. Retailers and brands realize they need to work together to have both a single view of the customer and a single view of their data in order to be successful.

Some interesting, yet not surprising, statistics were gathered from the retailers and vendors represented in the room. When asked about managing their POS data week to week, 66% were using POS data that was not provided via an EDI 852 file, eliminating their ability to automate the collection and processing of the data electronically, and instead having to work with multiple sources and formats of data. This process of data management and then trying to create usable reports to have meaningful partnership conversations between retailer and vendor is extremely time consuming: 83% of the retailers in the room spend 11-50+ hours per week managing and processing their POS data. More staggering was 95% of the vendors in the session were spending 11-50+ hours per week: 30% spending 11-20 hours, 40% spending 25-50 hours and 25% over 50 hours per week!

The good news is over half of the attendees in the room felt they are getting better at managing and using POS data each week, but 30% still admit to ‘Barely Using’ their POS data. Recognizing that heavy resources are needed to use POS data, especially on the vendor side, is making vendors ask, “Do we build an in-house solution to manage this, or outsource it?” CLICK HERE for an infographic detailing the pros and cons of each, and the differences in resource and financial investment.

Based on the time and effort being made by most of those represented, it is clear that POS data sharing is important for effective collaboration between retailers and vendors to “get it right for the customer”. POS data can be used to not just track units sold overall, but can give product/store level details on out-of-stocks, weeks of supply, sell thru %, average sales, geographic trends, inventory investment and lost sales opportunities. CLICK HERE for our industry sell thru % guidelines infographic.

We need to do everything we can to exceed our customers’ expectations and deliver an outstanding experience for them when they come across our brand. Sharing POS data and then using it to partner together to analyze it will help shape the customers’ experiences and give us inventory visibility and fulfillment across channels to meet customer expectations.

Want to learn more? Contact Jennifer@AcceleratedAnalytics.com to start a conversation. CLICK HERE to download whitepapers on analyzing POS data like a pro.

- Jennifer Freyer, Director of Sales and Marketing, Accelerated Analytics

TARGET’S NEW RULES FOR VENDORS TO TIGHTEN UP SUPPLY CHAIN AND INVENTORY

Target Corp is tightening its supply chain requirements for its vendors as part of a multi-billion dollar plan. The rules, effective May 30, include tighter deadlines for deliveries to warehouses, and fines for late deliveries and inaccuracies in product information.

Says Target’s COO, John Mulligan, vendors need to help keep shelves stocked, maximize sales and control costs. A letter was sent to suppliers. In the letter, Target stated the goal to keep products stocked to “lower missed sales for all of us.” Target US stores in 2015 held 8 to 9 billion items on store floors, in transit or in warehouses at any point in time.

The new rules will be phased on over the summer, with household, paper, and pet products needing to comply in June, health and beauty complying by July and apparel, home and electronics in August.

Source: Reuters.com

HOME DEPOT IT INVESTMENTS IN OMNI CHANNEL FOCUSES ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The Home Depot discussed this week its IT investment and strategy that focuses on the customer buying experience. The company’s Common Order Management system, or COM, is the largest IT project in the history of The Home Depot.

COM is an inventory visibility platform that looks at millions of deliveries through small and large delivery trucks, direct fulfillment to DCs and in-store pick up transactions. COM will help identify the best fulfillment option for a customer, while allowing Home Depot to leverage its omni-channel options.

The focus on this area is based on the fact that 1) the retailer’s fastest growing ecommerce channel is buy-online, pick up in sore, 2) the average ticket for ecommerce transactions are considerably higher than physical in store transactions and 3) ecommerce chat and email are growing  in product information exchange.

“The IT investments we are making are really to optimize the whole supply chain offering,” said Home Depot Senior VP and President-online, Kevin Hofmann.

Source: Chain Store Age

JCP Bets Big on IT

JCP is boosting IT spending again this year, even as it cuts back on other capital spending.  JCP spent $139 million on technology last year (23% of cap ex).  The focus will be on supply chain improvements and growth in eCommerce.  JCP expects the Internet to deliver $1 billion in sales over the next five years.  I've heard CIO's comment before that CEO's don't 'get it' when it comes to technology, but this one certainly seems to get it... "This is the next generation of how to make things better and how to be a better competitor," says Chief Executive Myron E. Ullman III. "People who are going to survive are working on this."

Technology certainly can be a way to reduce expenses through greater efficiency, but is technology a viable business growth strategy?

Nordstrom to Spend $45 Million on Tech Upgrades in 2010

Nordstrom recently announced its plans to invest approximately $40 to $45 million in technology upgrades next year, maintaining its level of IT spend year-over-year.

Over the past year, the luxury department store has been heavily focused on evolving its multi-channel business.  This focus has clearly paid off, since the luxury department store most recently reported in its latest quarter that sales for its online Nordstrom Direct business increased 16.4 percent.

The department store also has recently updated its inventory platform, so online orders could be fulfilled from the stores or any Nordstrom location.|

According to Blake Nordstrom, President and Director, Nordstrom, "This continues our ongoing effort to improve our customers' experience by providing them with greater access to more of our inventory whenever and however they want to shop."

Nordstrom continues, "For the customer to go online and be able to leverage the entire inventory throughout the company represents tremendous opportunities. There's significant learnings that are coming from this about our allocation of inventory and, again, our supply chain, but we view it as a real positive and view it as another confirmation on behalf of the customer in the feedback that they're giving us that this multi-channel strategy is super important to our future growth."