The visibility tool was installed in September 2001, at the beginning of Spencer Gifts' busy season, reports Jeffrey N. Lovelace, manager of distribution center systems for the retailer."We put it in place to let the transactions database build up" throughout the busy Halloween and Christmas seasons.End users will begin using the system later this spring. Once the system is fully functional, the retailer's logistics staff will be able to create online reports to chart and monitor real-time distribution progress.In addition, "ViaView will notify users when certain criteria occur," Lovelace explains.The system might notify users, for example, that a particular product is a hot seller or that another product is backordering. The solution will be used initially in the distribution center, but the company may also choose to roll out the system to its individual store managers.This would give stores the ability to check order status or inventory levels in real time. In addition, Lovelace says, store managers would be able to subscribe to information so that they could be notified what products are arriving, when a shipment actually left the DC, where it currently is located, and how many cartons are on the shipment, down to the SKU detail level.

According to Jeff Lovelace, Spencer Gifts' manager of distribution center systems, ViaWare has exceeded expectations since Spencer Gifts implemented it."We were asked to incorporate product and handle deliveries for stores that do all of their business three months out of the year and needed to rethink our original plan to incorporate this," continued Lovelace."The robustness of the software allowed us to handle additional product for a division that has grown from 38 to 350 stores in a short period of time.In fact, the smooth integration of the Spirit Halloween line into Spencer's distribution network provided the ultimate proof of ViaWare's value."In essence, Lovelace and his staff reviewed the training on the package they received from Provia and realized how easy it would be to manage this separate line of business."All we had to do was set up a separate warehouse within the system and give that warehouse its own set of rules for picking, packing and selecting material," Lovelace explained.All this was accomplished with Provia's standard product by simply adjusting certain parameters and altering a few user-defined fields within ViaWare. One of the driving forces behind Spencer Gifts quest for a new system was a requirement to have real-time notice of when the supply of individual items reached re-order points so those items could automatically be replenished in time to prevent workers from having to place them on back order.This was something the company's legacy system could not offer."When we were using the legacy system, we only returned data about picking and packing activities to the host system once a week," Lovelace says."With this real-time updating capability, the replenishment of items is triggered immediately," Lovelace says, "and, theoretically, we should never have a back order."With ViaWare, Lovelace says Spencer Gifts has experienced a huge reduction in back orders due to items being out of stock.He also says the accuracy of orders going to the stores has increased, even as the order volumes have increased."One of our main goals when we implemented ViaWare was to reduce our back order rate," said Lovelace."We've utilized RF technology to direct our staff in the warehouse for a long time," said Lovelace."But before ViaWare, we didn't have our complete operation synchronized."Lovelace expects ViaWare to continue to keep Spencer Gifts' distribution operation in sync even as the company's business continues to evolve, partly because of how easy the system is to reconfigure."A handful of us went through training to do the initial configuration of the system," he says."Since then, however, we have been able to let the people in various areas of the distribution center decide when they need to change parameters that affect them most.This allows us to implement new processes immediately when the need arises.""We are setting up an infrastructure that will allow us to communicate with various facilities, regardless of where they are located around the world," Lovelace says.

According to Jeff Lovelace, manager of distribution center systems for Spencer Gifts, ViaWare has exceeded expectations since Spencer Gifts implemented it at the company's 500,000-square-foot distribution center (DC) in Charlotte, N.C., more than two years ago.From just this one primary DC, Spencer Gifts manages the movement of goods from its suppliers to its 700 stores around the world. Spencer Gifts is a subsidiary of Universal Studios, and the Charlotte facility also supplies merchandise to three Universal Studios stores in Orlando and California.In fact, the smooth integration of the Universal Studios line into Spencer's distribution network provided the ultimate proof of ViaWare's value, according to Lovelace."When we originally purchased our warehouse management system (WMS), we mapped out a plan for how it would be configured and how it would operate over the next several years," says Lovelace.That plan had to be modified with the addition of the Universal Studios products."We were asked to incorporate product and handle deliveries for three Universal Studios stores outside of the Universal Studio theme parks and needed to rethink our original plan to incorporate this.The robustness of the software allowed us to handle additional product."In essence, Lovelace and his staff reviewed the training on the package they received from Provia and realized how easy it would be to manage this separate line of business."All we had to do was set up a separate warehouse within the system and give that warehouse its own set of rules for picking and packing and selecting material," Lovelace explains.All this was accomplished with Provia's standard product by simply adjusting certain parameters and altering a few user-defined fields within ViaWare. One of the driving forces behind Spencer Gifts' quest for a new system was a requirement to have real-time notice of when the supply of individual items reached re-order points.With that, those items could automatically be replenished in time to prevent the stores from having to place them on back order.This was something the company's legacy system could not offer."When we were using the legacy system, we only returned data about picking and packing activities to the host system once a week," Lovelace says."And workers only acknowledged that individual items needed to be replenished after they had finished processing an entire order.If they picked the last item on a shelf during the early part of filling an order, it could easily be half an hour later before they entered a notice that it was time to replenish that particular item.With that system, our back orders would automatically go up as our sales volumes increased." With the implementation of ViaWare, Spencer Gifts' warehouse staff automatically creates out-of-stock notices as they pull items from the shelves."With this real-time updating capability, the replenishment of items is triggered immediately," Lovelace says, "and, theoretically, we should never have a back order."One of the main goals when Spencer Gifts implemented ViaWare was to reduce its back-order rate, according to Lovelace.

The visibility tool was installed in September 2001, at the beginning of Spencer Gifts' busy season, reports Jeffrey N. Lovelace, manager of distribution center systems for the retailer."We put it in place to let the transactions database build up" throughout the busy Halloween and Christmas seasons.End users will begin using the system later this spring. Once the system is fully functional, the retailer's logistics staff will be able to create online reports to chart and monitor real-time distribution progress.In addition, "ViaView will notify users when certain criteria occur," Lovelace explains.The system might notify users, for example, that a particular product is a hot seller or that another product is backordering. The solution will be used initially in the distribution center, but the company may also choose to roll out the system to its individual store managers.This would give stores the ability to check order status or inventory levels in real time. In addition, Lovelace says, store managers would be able to subscribe to information so that they could be notified what products are arriving, when a shipment actually left the DC, where it currently is located, and how many cartons are on the shipment, down to the SKU detail level.