Lisa Parsons

Lisa Parsons, Director of MIS, C.N. Brown Corporation, South Paris, Maine

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The system had to be flexible, user-friendly and, in the words of MIS Supervisor Lisa Parsons, "do everything we wanted it to do."Flexibility is important because the South Paris, Maine-based retailer operates stores in New Hampshire and Vermont as well."The tax laws and lottery programs are much different in each state," Parsons noted.

Another reason flexibility is key: The chain has eight types of cash registers and each Big Apple Food Store has its own reporting quirks.Different cash registers mean different z-tapes."The order of the departments or how a register calculates the totals on the z-tape were different between stores," Parsons noted."We are not register experts; we had to figure out what each register was trying to do."

Gasoline reporting also differed by store."None of our stores are the same," Parsons lamented."We couldn't just copy the software for each store; we had to reprogram it.We tried to make the stores as similar as possible, but we still had to make changes."

"We wanted a system that would adapt to C.N. Brown; we didn't want to have to adapt to the software," Parsons said.
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After considering three backroom systems for the company's Big Apple Food Stores, Parsons and the rest of the six-person selection team - which included marketing managers, corporate personnel and other members of C.N. Brown's six-person MIS department - chose Oasis, Pinnacle's store manager workstation.

"We liked Oasis because it is easy to train the store managers on and it supports multi-level inventory management," Parsons noted."We can do item-level or category-level management, depending on how we want to work with our vendors."

Other traits desirable to the C.N. Brown team were the system's electronic pricebook capabilities, on which Parsons, her staff and a pricebook committee are working with an eye toward scanning, and the ability to create customized "red flags."

"For instance, we can set the parameters for cash drawer overages and shortages," Parsons said."If anything falls outside of our parameters, the system warns the managers or blocks them from doing anything else until they talk to a supervisor."

Before and After

Prior to automating the backroom, store managers toiled three to four hours a day on a sales report; a purchase journal that detailed what was ordered and what was brought into the store; a report on mark-ups, mark-downs and spoilage; manual perpetual trend sheets and shift reports.All of this paperwork was mailed to the corporate office, where eight employees were needed to key the data into the headquarters accounting system.
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"The system also has greatly cut back on errors, the majority of which were mathematical," Parsons said.

Store reports are sent electronically to the Pinnacle Pyramid system at headquarters, which is interfaced with the chain's UNIX-based accounting package by Structured Management Systems."We pull across everything except shift reporting and payroll hours, which we will soon," Parsons said.

Back at the store, managerial time once spent in the backroom behind a desk is now spent on employee training, vendor relations, merchandising and customer service.Managers also spend much more time behind the cash register.

"Managers are saving money on supplies, because they no longer buy blank report forms, and they have been able to cut their labor costs, since they are behind the counter more," Parsons said."This means a great deal to them, because better customer service has led to increased sales, which has positively affected their commissions."

Another time-saving feature of Oasis is its lottery sub-system.The Oasis lottery module is designed to help managers track instant ticket inventory and sales.When a new lottery game is purchased by the store, managers simply key in a game number, a description, the beginning and ending ticket numbers for each book, and the retail value of each ticket.Each time a new book is purchased, the game's book number is added and activated.
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"There is a big difference since the managers have better access to their gain-or-loss analysis, which shows them if their inventory is over or short," Parsons noted."Managers who have had the system in the longest are experiencing very clean inventories."

Bottom Line Benefits

After installing Oasis in 11 stores in November 1996, the MIS team spent a few months evaluating the system and developing a training curriculum.The team also took that time to figure the return on their technology investment, something needed before management would sign off on a chain-wide rollout.
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"We put together a presentation for upper management, trying to come up with a hard dollar savings directly attributable to the system," Parsons said.After considering the number of labor hours to be saved in the stores and at headquarters, as well as the amount to be saved on paper and related supplies in the stores and at headquarters, the MIS team pegged the anticipated total annual savings at nearly $300,000 a year.

Rollout and Support

With a go-ahead from the chain's executives, the MIS team proceeded quickly, installing Oasis in 65 stores in only three months, May through July 1997.Four MIS employees were dedicated to the rollout, though the entire MIS department had a hand in it.
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"We also taught them how to put the workstations together," Parsons said, "so that when they left, they took the computers back to the stores - and they were on their way!"

New managers are taught by a district trainer, a store manager selected by the MIS staff.Ongoing system support is handled by an in-house help desk.