Heads up displays and GPS devices provide airplane pilots — and even everyday car drivers — instant feedback on what’s happening now and the best way to respond. Retailers can implement similar solutions to drive best practice response to sudden interruptions and currenttrends to improve productivity and customer engagement.

A Jet-Setter’s Guide To Real-Time Retail

A Jet-Setter’s Guide To Real-Time RetailHeads up displays and GPS devices provide airplane pilots — and even everyday car drivers — instant feedback on what’s happening now and the best way to respond. Retailers can implement similar solutions to drive best practice response to sudden interruptions and current trends to improve produc-tivity and customer engagement.

The aviation industry contributed a major innova-tion that Retail can learn from-the Ground Proxim-ity Warning System (GPWS). During the advent of aviation, pilots could not see what conditions they

-ly dangerous were crashes that occurred due to a loss of situational awareness, unforeseen weather conditions, and other distractions.

The biggest problem occurred when pilots faced unexpected circumstance such as extreme weather. If they were not coached in real-time on standard best practice procedures they had no direction re-garding how to avert disaster.

Luckily the aviation industry came up with the GPWS, a system that had the ability to take data from disparate systems (GPS, altimeter gauges, and digital terrain databases) to provide pilots with a visual orientation of high and low points near the aircraft. The system issues alerts when something is going wrong. Coupled with alerts were visual and audio commands on how to best respond to avert disaster. Essentially it tells pilots what to do in re -al-time to avoid a crash.

By combining real-time alerts and prescribed best-practice corrective action, GPWS dramatically

-dents for large aircrafts. Since 1974, when the Fed -eral Aviation Administration made it a requirement for large aircrafts to carry GPWS equipment, there has not been a single passenger fatality in a CFIT by a large jet in US airspace.

The concept behind this innovation will lead to huge improvements in the retail world. When problems occur, it should be easy for an associate to correct the issue instead of wasting precious minutes think-

Product Recalls: A Prime Case For Improving Customer ServiceTake for example class one product recalls. Class one recalls are for products that are dangerous,

possibly even deadly. For a recall this severe, cor-porate issues orders to all stores in the chain to make sure these dangerous products are taken off shelves safely with minimal risk to customers or associates.

With a task like this, which requires caution and meticulousness, associates cannot simply be told to pick up the products and return them to the back-room. Everyone’s safety is at risk, so a step-by-step approach is required. In other words, associates should be given a checklist to make sure that not

they know how to remove it from shelves, and,

According to Jim Walton, Business Relationship

“Product recall compliance dropped from weeks to 2 hours or less.”

This time could be cut even shorter implementing

StorePulse® which would put corporate directives

while issuing best practices. StorePulse can also prevent the sale of recalled products at the POS. Being connected to the POS system, StorePulse can send an alert to the cashier in the event that a recalled product has been scanned. The cashier can then explain the situation to the customer and give them the opportunity to pick out a similar product.

Product Rollouts, Promotions, Weather, And Events Demand DisciplineStandardization of best practice actions is import-ant for critical tasks, but can also be used to shave precious minutes off other tasks allowing associ-ates to spend more time selling to customers and ensuring the best possible customer experience.New product rollouts could positively be impacted.During a big product rollout, retailers want to make

“Product recall compliance dropped from weeks to 2 hours or less.”

-Jim Walton, Business Relationship Manager, Hannaford

sure that the end caps and merchandising for new products are consistent throughout all their stores. Stores will have one chance to make a good first impression on customers, corporate will want to make sure that promotions and presentation will be perfect across the chain. Using Reflexis, retailers can be sure that when a new product is rolled out, that the associates putting together the rollout will have a step by step process to follow, ensuring per-fection across stores which will help maximize sales of new products.

As customers become more adept with technology and as social media and local events play an in-creasingly important roles in promotion and cus-tomer traffic spikes, retailers will have to develop a GPWS of their own. Retailers need a tool that can help them respond to real-time events in stores as they occur. Reflexis StorePulse® is that tool. StorePulse can act as a retailer’s GPS, looking at real-time data to see how un-foreseen events will impact in-store traffic and can help reallocate resources to best respond.

Say there is a big football game being played be-tween two rival teams. StorePulse can look at the store’s sales forecast and contrast it with the actual sales from a similar event the previous year. Instead of smoothing out the sales spike, like a traditional forecasting engine would, StorePulse sees the spike as an opportunity that could present itself again- when the two teams meet this year.

StorePulse can tell the store manager that during a similar event last year, that traffic in deli, athletic apparel, and grocery went up, while traffic in the pharmacy went down. This could be due to in-creased traffic caused by football fans looking for food, gear, and snacks to have during the game while people who would normally come in to pick up their prescription stay away due to higher traffic in the stores.

A mall-based department store chain customer pro-vides another interesting application of StorePulse. This chain, which has a store near Myrtle Beach, told us how StorePulse can be a powerful tool for cre-ating the best possible customer experience while driving sales.

The weather in the surrounding area is generally warm and sunny. During the weekend, most of the chain’s would-be customers spend their afternoons at the beach. Store managers, and schedule fore-casting systems, know this, so when schedules are published weeks in advanced, stores are staffed anticipating slower traffic during the weekend.

But demand patterns change with the weather. Store managers know that when it rains, it pours (customers). Stores have to be ready for extra cus-tomer traffic; In the old way, store managers had to spend time on the phone calling unscheduled employees to see if anyone could pick up last-min-ute shifts to serve the sudden influx of customers. There must be a better way.

StorePulse enabled store managers receive an alert about weather patterns suddenly changing and are instructed to push a request for shift pickup to unscheduled associates. With the click of a button the store manager has set in motion the process to maintain service levels and drive sales. The Store-Pulse enabled associate, knowing that higher traffic will lead to higher sales and higher commission, just has to accept one of the new shifts and StorePulse will track the picked up shifts till they are all filled. With just two clicks of a button the store manager has adequately staffed the store to maintain cus-tomer service levels so the store can provide the best possible experience to customers.

GPWS technology has allowed the aviation industry to be safer and more efficient, gaining the trust of customers across the world, becoming the standard for global travel. Similar technologies have shown great success in other environments — the standard GPS is used in cars, bikes, and held in the hands of every smartphone user. Today, a select few retail-ers are giving these same tools to their associates, and they are reaping the benefits. It’s time you use StorePulse on mobile devices to harness real-time execution to take retail to new heights — providing the best possible customer service and increasing sales.

A Jet-Setter’s Guide To Real-Time Retail

“Best practice responses should be put into associate’s hands so they can optimize selling to customers.”

A Jet-Setter’s Guide To Real-Time Retail

Contact ReflexisReflexis Systems, Inc.3 Allied Drive, Suite #400Dedham, MA 02026Phone: +1 (781) 493-3400Fax: +1 (781) 493-3999info@reflexisinc.com

About Reflexis Systems, Inc,Reflexis is the pioneer in real-time store execution and workforce manage-ment solutions that enable retailers to execute their customer engagement strategy flawlessly and uncover profit. The Reflexis platform of real-time store execution, task management, KPI/compliance, time and attendance, and labor scheduling (including budgeting, forecasting, and employee self-service) enables retailers to align store labor/activities to corporate

goals and institutionalize best-practice response to real-time metrics and alerts.

For the past 14 years, more than 200 of the world’s best companies in multiple vertical categories such as retail, hospitality, and Quick Serve Restaurants have reported dramatic improvements in compliance with corporate strategies; higher productivity of corporate, field, and store employees; and increased revenue and profitability after implementing Reflexis workforce management and real-time execution solutions. Reflexis StorePulse® (patent pending) synchronizes activities with real-time KPIs, alerts, and customer de-mand. Stores, hotels, and restaurants can systemically execute best practices to provide a greater quality of customer engagement, leading to higher revenues.

Reflexis Systems, Inc. is privately held and headquartered in Dedham, Massachusetts and has offices in Atlanta, London, the Netherlands, and India.

A Jet-Setter’s Guide To Real-Time Retail