Dreaming of an Automated Christmas
With visions of the mostly dismal 2008 holiday shopping season still dancing in their heads, retailers are doing their best to ensure that their systems and technology will drive sales and improve customer service. For Charlotte Russe Holding, that means adding more automation across its internal network and point-of-sale systems.
Holiday 2008 was a challenging one for the San Diego-based Charlotte Russe in many ways. Besides dealing with a sluggish start to the holiday season, it had embarked on a business model revamp to ward off already declining profits amid the growing recession. The retailer also was battling an unwanted potential takeover by investment firms KarpReilly and H.I.G. Capital last November. (The offer was rejected.)
Undaunted, Charlotte Russe forged ahead. Staying true to its business model of value-based apparel and accessories, the retailer managed to drive high transaction volumes during a listless shopping season. A key factor in its success was the performance of its checkouts. As frugal shoppers finally made their way into the stores for last-minute gifts, the chain’s in-store network and systems maintained stability and efficiencies for speedy checkouts, according to Ed Wong, COO, Charlotte Russe, which operates 500 stores nationwide.
The chain was mindful to provide this stability by backing up corporate networks that supported store-level telecommunications and front-end hardware. This configuration added a level of redundancy across the almost 500 stores it operates. Charlotte Russe also kept a keen eye on remediation, and stood at attention “at even the slightest sign of a service interruption,” Wong said.
If a hiccup or interruption in network service was reported, the chain used a manual process to trigger and switch its main broadband line to a secondary narrowband connection.
“This ensured that credit-card authorizations and checkout speeds remained timely,” Wong noted.
To maintain the same front-end customer service this holiday season, Charlotte Russe is eliminating the time and resources dedicated to physically monitoring internal systems and is using an automated solution.
“Too many times, technology is taken for granted,” Wong explained. “Focusing on redundancy is just as important as adding new functionality in stores. Just like electricity, network support needs to be available. Without it, we jeopardize sales and the customer experience.”
While it sounds like a costly endeavor, Wong describes the project as “mandatory.” According to the company’s third-quarter earnings report, Charlotte Russe CEO John D. Goodman said the chain remains committed to operating conservatively, a plan that forced the company to reprioritize some information technology investments.
“We re-evaluated our planned expenditures, and those that were mandated due to compliance or business continuity stayed in our IT budget,” Wong said. “Those projects that enhanced systems or were not mission-critical customer-facing business applications were moved out to 2010.”
Automation: To ensure that its automation project got off on the right foot, Wong and his team made a point of hitting the stores and chatting first-hand with the end users. Prompting conversations with issues stemming from service calls logged into the IT help desk, the team personally interviewed store-level personnel to see how it could further remove obstacles hindering the buying and checkout process.
All ideas were evaluated, a game plan was established, and the solutions were tested in a store system lab at the chain’s corporate office. The tested options will be rolled out to groups of stores between September and October, just in time for the holidays.
For example, the chain recently automated the network failover processes. Besides supporting credit- and debit-card authorizations, Charlotte Russe’s network also supports trickle polling and posting of sales throughout the day.
Data traffic flows through the company’s wide area network and into the central server. If any issues arise regarding hardware or servers, the automation solution will immediately switch traffic to backup servers to ensure business continuity, allowing IT to diagnose the issue on the main server and begin repairs.
Automation is also at the heart of Charlotte Russe’s upgraded POS software package. A longtime customer of JDA Software, Scottsdale, Ariz., Charlotte Russe has been using JDA’s Point-of-Sale software for about two years.
“The software continues to mature, and the latest release addresses automation capabilities,” Wong said.
While new enhancements are designed to increase speed and throughput during checkout, the newest release caters more to the “well-being” POS’ utilities and support components. More specifically, it also allows Charlotte Russe’s IT team to monitor the behavior of front-end hardware, including whether equipment is being taxed by abundant shopper traffic.
In the past, the team would have to wait on calls from the help desk to learn of front-end issues. Now, however, IT team members launch a screen that monitors all store-level equipment and provides operational metrics to evaluate what is happening in real time.
Overall, the chain expects these enhancements to support uptime and improve customer service, a step toward fulfilling the chain’s goal “to remove any potential obstacles that will hinder store associates in delivering the best customer experience,” Wong said.