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•Case Study: Gain Inventory Visibility

By Erin Harris, Integrated Solutions For Retailers magazine

When Dennis Hodgson, senior VP and CIO at A.C. Moore, joined the company in 2006, he made an alarming discovery. The retailer lacked an integrated merchandising system to monitor and replenish inventory for its 60,000+ SKUs, resulting in a severely over-stocked warehouse. Worse, a limited IT budget and IT staff as well as a primitive internal IT infrastructure were not conducive to supporting enterprise applications. Focused on gaining inventory visibility and a competitive advantage, Hodgson found a way to implement a full-scale retail merchandising system despite the retailer's lack of IT resources.

A.C. Moore began as a mom-and-pop business in 1985. Today, the specialty retailer resides comfortably in the middle tier. Headquartered in Berlin, NJ, A.C. Moore is a multichannel arts and crafts retailer that operates 136 brick-and-mortar locations on the East Coast. Despite its sizable business expansion, A.C. Moore's IT software system growth did not keep pace with that prosperous pattern. Hodgson wasn't on staff long before he began to analyze the retailer's existing corporate systems to determine what was needed. He uncovered homegrown warehouse management and payroll systems intact. Yet, a corporate-level merchandising application — what some industry analysts consider one of the most critical components in a retail operation — did not exist.

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•Case Study: Gain Inventory Visibility

Used with permission from Integrated Solutions For Retailers magazine.