Case Study: Three Key Benchmarks For Store Operations Improvement

By Matt Pillar, Integrated Solutions For Retailers magazine

Tenacious monitoring of associate scheduling, sales, and store traffic drives operations at la Vie en Rose, a 150-store Canadian retailer of lingerie and swimwear. By analyzing correlations among these metrics, the company applies precise adjustments that drive profits at the store level. "Focusing on any of these key performance indicators (KPIs) autonomously results in something less than a complete picture of the business," says VP of business technology Madeleine Doucet.

Monitoring sales wasn't a problem for the company, but improving sales by honing associate schedules to match store traffic was. That's why in early 2010, Doucet led an effort to upgrade the company's manual scheduling and timekeeping effort prior to a traffic counting implementation. The retailer chose the Web-based TimeZone workforce management system from ITR. "This implementation allowed us to manage schedules by store-level tasks, which was important leading up to the integration of store traffic counting," explains Doucet.