Implementation of a stock & sales system for English Heritage

Background

English Heritage champions England's historic environment for the people of today and for future generations operating over 100 manned sites such as Stonehenge, Dover Castle and Hadrian's Wall. It wished to implement a stock and sales system, SASS, in ticket offices and shops in these sites to automate processes, provide management information and improve the customer experience.

Project Summary

English Heritage selected Megabyte’s integrated EPOS, EFT, warehouse and merchandising system with automated links to its existing accounts system in order to meet the project objectives. Retail Answers was appointed to manage the implementation team of 9 business and IT professionals, which took responsibility for all aspects of the testing, training, support and rollout. Retail Answers was also responsible for managing the relationships with the system suppliers, ensuring that priorities were set correctly and project targets were met. The head office and warehouse components were successfully implemented and the EPOS system with integrated card processing was deployed in the top sites on schedule.

Benefits

• Sales and stock turn have increased in the sites with the system at a far greater rate than the sites without the system
• The top 200 lines were never out of stock in any site
• The number of suppliers and products have been reduced by 50% enabling better supplier negotiation and higher margins
• Overall stock has been reduced by 15% with no impact on sales and warehouse stock has been reduced by 16% generating lower warehouse charges
• The elimination of paperwork and its replacement with automated interfaces has reduced administration overheads in the sites and head office
• The stock location system has significantly improved operational effectiveness in the warehouse

“Retail Answers brought project management and specific retail systems expertise to our project to drive through the implementation and enable us to gain the benefits from our investment in the system.”
Mike McElwee, English Heritage’s ICT Director