Retail and Hospitality

Wickes improves workload allocation

11 June 2008

Wickes, a home improvement retailer with more than 170 stores across the UK, has invested in a workforce management solution from WorkPlace Systems.

"We knew that if we could get a better match between our staff and our customer requirements this would make a significant contribution to our performance," stated Craig Pickett, stores productivity manager. To do this effectively Wickes had to refine and automate its current scheduling process.

The mismatch between the number of labour hours allocated to stores and those that are actually needed means UK retailers are wasting about £2bn a year, some 7.5 per cent of their annual wage bill, claims Kurt Salmon Associates (KSA), a global management consultancy specialising in retail and consumer products.

"With all the emphasis in retail on cost-cutting, this is an area where a real difference can be made," said Sue Butler, a senior manager at KSA. "Labour remains retail’s second largest cost after merchandise, but remains out of control for most companies. Research among our clients in Europe and North America shows that most retailers do not have a clear idea of how long it takes store staff to carry out specific processes and tasks so there is often no logic behind the number of labour hours allocated and those that are actually needed, giving store managers a weekly headache."

At Wickes, the legacy system produced the number of labour hours by store and was not driven by store activity or a customer service proposition. It could not produce forecasts that were granular enough to provide accurate daily employee schedules. "It was clear that to get the most from our intended investment in a new workforce management system, we would need to improve the way we generated workload demand at store level," continued Pickett.

Wickes chose WorkPlace Systems to provide the workforce management system - which runs on Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Server 2003 - and engaged LSI Consulting to review all store processes, produce a set of labour standards and develop an accurate operating model. This enabled the workforce management system to generate an accurate forecast of workload demand. As part of the project, LSI was also engaged to review, streamline and document all store processes, including customer service and management activities and subsequently produce standard timings for all activities. Time standards were developed for each of the documented processes using RetailEASE.

Pickett concluded: "Once the standards had been developed, the acid test was to apply them to our operating model and evaluate the workload demand they generated. The co-operation between LSI and WorkPlace paid dividends, giving us an integrated approach to standards development and demand generation. The accuracy of the standards ensured a quick validation and sign-off from the retail management team."