Specializing in Success:

Five Portraits in Omni-Channel Specialty Retail

Sporting Goods

Apparel

Home Improvement

Formalwear

Home Décor

Brand loyalty drives success in specialty retail. With mobile, social media

and cutting-edge web technologies creating a more competitive landscape,

specialty retailers are looking to gain and keep the loyalty of their customers

in more ways than ever before. “Omni-channel” is what many in the retail industry

are now calling these efforts at building more seamless customer experiences. But

your customers have a very different perspective of this new, much talked-about

phenomenon. They call it shopping. And if you can keep up with the omni-channel

shopper, the benefits are enormous. McKinsey & Co.1 estimates that successfully

creating an omni-channel strategy will:

• Increase revenue by more than 2% due to lower out-of-stocks and an

improved customer experience

• Decrease the likelihood of markdowns by 10-15%

• Reduce lead times to 1-2 days

• Increase DC throughput 40%

• Lower DC costs up to 20%

To reach these customers, innovative retailers are creating a collaborative,

channel-less environment that pools selling, inventory and fulfillment functions

across the enterprise to become more responsive to customer preferences.

Here are five real portraits of specialty retailers who implemented Manhattan’s

omni-channel solutions to create exceptional customer experiences. In fact, the

successes they have seen from implementing these solutions have given them a

distinct competitive advantage in their markets—so much so that we’ve had to

anonymize these portraits in order to tell their stories.

1 “The future of retail supply chains”, McKinsey & Co., Feb 2013

Omni-Channel Means Using Everything You Have to Gain and Keep Customers

Fielding Store Order Capture and Inventory Management Helps Raise Sales for Sporting Goods Chain Profile: A large-format sporting goods retailer man-ages a large store network in addition to e-com-merce and catalog operations.

Challenge: Inventory includes everything from canoes to catchers’ mitts, but the retailer lacked assortment depth in individual stores to meet the unique demands of its most loyal customers. A network-wide view of inventory was needed to make items in each store available to customers everywhere. Orders for customized equipment also needed to be captured and tracked across the supply chain.

Solution: Manhattan Associates’ Store Inventory provides capabilities to improve the in-store shopping experience, including:

• Real-time store inventory adjustments so the retailer and its customers know what items are on-hand

• Recording item-level inventory changes to indicate availability for store-to-store transfers, return-to-ven-dor transactions and claims processing

• Improved store staffing and receipt processes can be planned effectively with ASN and case-level visibility of store replenishment shipments, vendor drop- shipments, store-to-store transfers and customer special orders,

Manhattan’s Store Order Management (SOM) also lets store associates capture special orders and track the status of orders from purchase to delivery. The solution also provides order pickup confirmation (for pickup in-store workflows) to facilitate payment processes.

This improved network-wide visibility (in conjunction with Manhattan Associates’ Warehouse Management solution in the DCs) has contributed to:

• An increase in comparable store sales by an average 4.5%

• Improvements in gross margins of up to 2%

Apparel and Footwear Retailer Compliments eCommerce with “Anywhere Availability and Fulfillment”Profile: A growing apparel and footwear company manages a retail store network as well as a multiple e-commerce sites.

Challenge: The volatility of customer demand and the need to sell-through seasonal styles made it difficult to determine the right levels of inventory to stock in each of the company’s channels. The increased influence of social media also made customer demand more unpredictable. The retailer needed to leverage inventory in its store network to prevent lost sales for out-of-stock items online. Furthermore, the retailer needed a way of experimenting with varying order fulfillment priorities across its network – from labor and inventory utiliza-tion to proximity to customers for fast delivery.

Solution: The retailer implemented Manhattan Associates’ Order Management solutions to provide:

• Real-time inventory availability information across its network of DCs and stores, governed by sophisticated business rules to determine wheth-er to display items on the company’s e-commerce site

• Intelligent sourcing and management of customer orders from purchase all the way to delivery

• The ability to avoid markdowns by finding the most distressed or lowest-priced unit of a store item to fulfill an online order at a higher price

In addition, Manhattan’s Store Fulfillment solution enabled store associates to accept, pick, pack and ship online orders from store inventory quickly and efficiently.

As a result of this improved flexibility and cross-channel collaboration:

• Gross margins have notably improved on late-season and distressed inventory

• e-Commerce continues to grow by providing substantial inventory depth

• Peak volume for orders routed to the store network has reached nearly 50% of total online orders in a single day

• Store fulfillment opened the door to new thinking on pricing and promotions strategies.

Home Improvement Retailer Builds Higher Customer Satisfaction Profile: A chain retailer operates several hun-dred stores in Europe. In addition, its network consists of a set of urban, small-footprint DCs and a fast-growing e-commerce site.

Challenge: Because of long lead times for orders for certain products, the company needed to access inventory across its network of stores and DCs to avoid over-ordering from suppliers and prevent lost sales due to stock-outs. However, its existing system could not provide real-time inventory availability or status of orders.

Solution: With real-time inventory, visibility across its network (including availability of in-transit and on-order items) and advanced order orchestration capabilities, Manhattan Associates’ Order Management solution has prepared the company to:

• Improve customer satisfaction by providing visibility of inventory across the store network

• Lower lost sales by leveraging full-network inventory to save sales and present broader product assortments to in-store customers

• Improve accuracy of delivery and available-to-promise dates

• Ship directly from vendors to customers for special orders, reducing delivery time and improving product selection

By integrating directly with Manhattan’s Warehouse Management solution, this retailer has also been able to:

• Improve the efficiency and balance of order processing for both direct-to-consumer and store replenishment orders

• Intelligently route orders to the correct DC based on inventory availability, capacity, available labor, etc.

• Enable more effective shipment planning by factoring in transportation costs and other considerations during order sourcing

North American Formalwear Chain Dresses Up In-Store SalesProfile: A formalwear chain retailer maintains a network of several hundred stores and a signifi-cant e-commerce/catalog/call center operation.

Challenge: The brick-and-mortar store is key to the customer experience for this retailer thanks to in-store services like stylists, fittings and alterations. Because its loyal customers demand choice and speedy delivery, the company needed to provide a full range of customer delivery options, minimize single-item vendor shipments and maximize the visibility of its network inventory to support better customer service.

Solution: By using Manhattan’s Order Management solutions this retailer is now able to deliver:

• Real-time order status for customer inquiries

• Real-time inventory visibility across the network

• Receipt of inbound shipments at stores and fulfillment/receiving of store-to-store transfers

• Real-time inventory checks and order promising during cart checkout to improve the e-commerce shopping experience

• Lower lost sales by enabling store associates to source orders for out-of-stock items from across the store network

By implementing Manhattan’s Store Inventory the company:

• Improved customer service by offering improved visibility of inventory across the store network

• Reduced the time needed to process receipts from DCs and vendor direct shipments in the store

• Improved store execution through management of inventory transferred within the store network

Overall, Manhattan solutions have helped the retailer increase comp-store sales by an average of 5%.

Home Décor Retailer Furnishes Customer Experience with Flexible FulfillmentProfile: A North American home décor retailer op-erates retail stores across a number of brands in multiple geographies. Its e-commerce site is one of the fastest-growing home décor storefronts online.

Challenge: Because of regional differences in styles and customer preferences, in-stock items vary widely from store to store and differ from those offered online. As a result, stores were under constant pressure to sell through local inventory to avoid markdowns before new assortments were introduced. Additionally, the retailer wanted to improve customer loyalty by ensuring any sales touchpoint could service any customer need.

Solution: Enterprise Order Management (EOM) from Manhattan Associates provides availability of inventory throughout the retailer’s network. This reduces sell-through pressure by making store items available enterprise-wide. Inclusion of EOM’s call center selling capabilities allows the retailer to turn customer service calls into sales opportunities. EOM also provides intelligent order routing for all customer orders, factoring in store capacity, labor utilization and fulfillment/transportation costs to deliver products to customers quickly and at the best margins possible. These capabili-ties have enabled:

• Buy anywhere, ship-from store and pick-up in store capabilities

• A broader array of products across all channels and increased online sales

• Faster and lower-cost delivery for direct-to-consumer shipments

• Customer service representatives to capture and update orders, facilitate returns/ exchanges, provide network inventory availability, provide appeasements, etc.

Improvements in the omni-channel customer experience have helped the retailer:

• Increase e-commerce sales

• Improve gross margins and sell-through rates

• Reduce inventory carrying and purchase costs

The explosion of omni-channel retail shows no signs of slowing down. As these five examples illustrate, Manhattan Associates has the breadth of solutions and expertise to help you take

advantage of all the opportunities these specialty retail innovations have to offer.

Our omni-channel solutions include:

Enterprise Order Management serves as a central repository for orders and point of sale transactions from across all sales channels, providing a full view of customer interactions throughout the enterprise. With intelligent order orchestration and network inventory availability capabilities, Enterprise Order Management acts as the operating system for omni-channel retail, driving increased sales and improved margins through flexible execution management. The solution also provides call center order capture, cross-channel returns and advanced exceptions management.

Store Order Management empowers your store associates to save the sale when in-store customers are presented with out-of-stocks. The solution also allows for “endless aisle” assortments from across your store and online network to be leveraged by associates for cross-selling and up-selling. With complete inventory visibility across the entire distribution network (DCs, other stores and vendors), your customers get the products they want, while you secure the sale and strengthen customer loyalty.

Store Inventory & Fulfillment provides powerful, reliable omni-channel capabilities at the store level. Store associates can quickly manage order fulfillment requests, providing real-time order acknowledgement and status updates back to your customers. They’ll also have all the tools necessary to improve inventory accuracy, to ensure they’re not wasting time searching for inventory—inventory that may not even be in the store.

For more information on how Manhattan is helping retailers leverage their supply chain for more competitive advantage, please contact us at 1-800-661-4872 or visit www.manh.com/industries/retail.

Let Manhattan Associates help you specialize in delighting your customers.