Ian Grayson | April 29, 2008
Webster Holdings
IN the highly competitive world of fashion retailing, being able to closely monitor purchasing patterns can mean the difference between success and failure.
Adam Ioakim says there were massive savings
With trends and tastes changing rapidly, retailers can find themselves with piles of unwanted items, or bare shelves where popular products have sold out. Neither scenario is good.
For Australian retailer M. Webster Holdings, keeping tabs on buying trends around the country is a vital part of daily operations.
It operates a range of retail clothing outlets including Jigsaw, Marcs, Morrissey and David Lawrence.
Until recently, the company relied on 56Kbps dial-up modem links to extract data from each store and deliver it to the company's data centre in Sydney.
Each night the links would download sales and stock details, which were then analysed in a database.
Company systems accountant Adam Ioakim says it had got to the point that the downloads were taking so long there wasn't enough time each night to complete the analysis.
"We realised it was time to move on from dial-up," he says.
"We got a short list of service providers together, did some tests and made a decision to go with Uecomm."
The company installed an ethernet-based wide area network (WAN) to connect all stores to its Sydney central facility.
After a successful trial in 10 stores the network was gradually extended over three months to cover all locations.
"We were able to disconnect more than 200 phone lines, which ended up being a massive saving for us," Ioakim says.
The ADSL-based network, which delivers download speeds of 512Kbps and upload speeds of 128Kbps, allows the company to easily transfer large amounts of data from all stores.
This is not a huge amount of bandwidth, but it is more than enough for current requirements and can be increased in future should faster speeds be required.
"On a busy day such as a weekend, we can send 1GB of data to and from a single store," Ioakim says.
"This comprises everything from sales data, member information, payroll details and staff hours to stock requests."
As well as enabling more efficient transfer of data from stores, the new network allows the company to use a variety of new features.
One example is an intranet-based email system that has already improved communications efficiency.
"Previously we didn't have any email at all because the dial-up network could not easily support it," Ioakim says.
"Now that we have it in place, it has reduced the number of calls to headquarters by more than 50 per cent.
"All non-urgent correspondence from stores is now sent and responded to by email, and it has made a huge difference."
The company is also progressively rolling out closed-circuit television cameras in key stores.
Video feeds from the cameras are sent over the network to company headquarters in real time, where they are used for two key reasons.
"The first is theft," Ioakim says.
"We store video for six weeks and if there is a problem in a store we can go back and check to see what happened."
The cameras are also used by the headquarters-based merchandising team.
Each week the team sends detailed plans to each store about how stock should be displayed and the premises presented.
Then, rather than having to travel to each store to check them out, they can get views of exactly how they look using the cameras.
This makes a big difference when stores are spread from Australia's east coast to Perth.
The company has four closed circuit television cameras 10 stores as a trial and plans to cover all stores, Ioakim says.
Such technology would not have been possible without the ethernet WAN.
The company is also installing people counters on the doors of each store to monitor how many customers come and go each trading day.
This data can then be compared with sales data to assess how many of visitors stores are being converted into customers.
In a further effort to reduce operating costs in stores, Webster Holdings is also testing voice over internet protocol in three of its flagship stores.