In this interview Joseph Kessel, Wild Regional Manager, explains the challenges that were being faced with the legacy system, and why the Qdos solution was selected for the 28 store franchise.
Qdos Products Used by Wild:
Wild Cards and Gifts is Australia’s premier greeting card, wrap and gift retailer. We specialize in a wide range of premium greeting cards from a wide range of suppliers, gifts for all occasions and wrap to ensure beautiful presentation. Customer service and store presentation are core components of the Wild experience.
We looked at a number of different solutions and chose Qdos because it had all the ‘non-negotiable’ features we were looking for from both a Head Office and franchisee perspective, the pricing suited our budget, and we could add more features if we needed to.
As a primarily franchise based business, a POS solution was required that offered franchisees the ability to manage their own stock and price lists, whilst allowing the franchisor top level consolidated information for overall business analysis.
The Wild business utilises a large database of rapidly changing products, in particular greeting cards. A POS system that managed a large number of products (hundreds of thousands) and high transaction volume was essential.
A system that offered a flexible customer loyalty program and integrated marketing solution based on historical customer information was required.
Qdos offered all this and more including Laybys, Gift Cards, and flexible promotional tools.
Our franchisees found Qdos Retail POS easy to use, and they are able to process transactions quickly which enhances the customer experience. The Qdos solution has made it possible for a Wild Loyalty Program (due to be launched in 2020) – customer information can be captured at the POS, we can look up customer loyalty information and customers can easily redeem loyalty rewards.
QDOS has a wide range of benefits that can be used to efficiently operate your business. The flexibly to further develop the solution based on your business requirements is also an attractive feature. The process from order to delivery and stock to the floor improved once our store teams understood the processes and benefits.
Our wide range of products in store is challenging to manage as there are high levels of product lines. Qdos has helped define our product categories and subcategories more efficiently. We have been able to provide our stores with the flexibility to create their own products and set their own pricing, whilst at the same time ensuring there is control from a Head Office perspective.
Various systems were in operation including cash registers in some stores, stand alone POS systems in others and a version of a cloud based system in the majority. The POS system was a ‘glorified cash register’ that did not meet the needs of the organization for reporting for business decision making at either the individual franchise or organizational levels. Customer information was poorly structured and inaccessible across multiple databases, leading to customer duplication. Lookup functions for products and customers were poorly structured resulting in duplication and data integrity issues.
The system had very limited capacity to assist in stock replenishment ordering. Ordering and stock entry was cumbersome and inefficient. The POS provider was based in a different country and service and support was both costly and inefficient.
QDOS has streamlined our processes and made overall day to day operations more efficient.
Product creation is simple and can be individually added ‘on the fly’ as a purchase order is created, or through a very flexible bulk upload process. Editing is easy through batch processes for large updates and hyperlinks for an individual edit.
Purchase Orders are easily created based on sales information and replenishment profiles. Since it is a cloud-based system ordering can be done by the buyer remotely at a time convenient to suit the business needs. Orders are emailed directly from the system to suppliers and ancillary information can be captured and stored referencing the supplier or purchase order. Qdos has a comprehensive staging process for purchase and sales orders allowing visibility of stock on hand, stock allocated, pending orders and arrival dates.
Qdos has superior advanced search features of its relational database that makes the creation of promotions, stocktakes and product lines quick and easy.
Reporting in Qdos is real-time even when remote, giving greater control and accuracy over business information and decision making. Suppliers are increasingly using electronic invoicing and Qdos allows us to import these saving time and improving accuracy.
Previously all reporting was manual which created a lot of paperwork for our franchisees on a weekly or monthly basis. Now we have live reporting on sales, inventory and financials.
The support received from Qdos has been exceptional and we have found the team to be professional throughout the transition. Whilst there is a learning curve to understand how to use Qdos ERP, the QDOS team are with you each step of the way.
Joseph Kessel, WHSmith Australia