Many aspects of modern day-to-day furniture retailing can be streamlined.
‘In November we were proud to go live with leading Minerva member Haskins Furniture, which is now using our new unified commerce platform – OMNIS Retail. Haskins had decided to move away from a disjointed, inefficient and insecure website integrated with a legacy furniture retail system. OMNIS provides it with a coherent platform for modern omni-channel retailing and delivers ecommerce, EPoS, CRM and a suite of head office and retail operations management functionality – all running on one database, thus streamlining many aspects of modern day-to-day furniture retailing,’ says Wayne Robins, Iconography md.
‘For instance, product catalogue creation and maintenance happens once and is used online and in-store to full effect. In-store OMNIS acts as both an EPoS and as a tool for providing potential customers with product information such as options and dimensions together with availability, lead times and location. The ecommerce front end is unrivalled in terms of its flexibility to enable retailers to present and deliver their brand and products in multiple ways.
‘Superb ecommerce visual merchandising tools deliver engaging product layouts, and intelligent functionality means product sequencing, overlays (for example new, sale and bestseller) and associations (upsells and cross sells) can be automated based on rule sets, to drive conversions and efficiency by cutting hours of routine work for the ecommerce team.
‘OMNIS offers unified order processing, as all orders – whether they come via the website, store or over the phone – end up in the same pot in real time to be reviewed and actioned. This means that customer special orders can be easily collated and placed with appropriate suppliers via the native ONMIS purchase ordering functionality and managed through the whole process, keeping customers fully in the loop at each stage.’
Incoming deliveries can be viewed and planned in the calendar using the warehouse module. Customer special orders and stock items can then be scanned in on receipt against purchase orders and put in the warehouse using the system, with relevant labels printed and applied to items, with locations and subsequent movement within the business managed and recorded.
‘Products coming into the warehouse to fulfil a customer order can be added to delivery runs and checked for outstanding balances to be paid, before being picked using the delivery schedule features within OMNIS. The system produces picking lists and provides flexible lorry management to enable items to be moved between lorries and also packed in the correct sequence for the delivery run they are on.
‘OMNIS has full order history management and CRM. Every interaction on a customer order is logged and recorded. Notes, actions and follow-ups can be added to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction. All the moving parts of a leading furniture business, from customer service tickets to printed price tickets in-store, are visible in and managed by OMNIS, providing oversight and insight throughout. Come and see us on Hall 1, Stand G25 at January Furniture Show.’
