Meadowhall retailers profit from warehouse tech

Retailers at Sheffield's Meadowhall shopping centre have increased sales since the on-site warehouse starting using new technology to manage inventory.

The centre, owned by property group British Land, has replaced a previous IT system which required a great deal of manual entry to run its Accelerated Response Centre (ARC).

The ARC is a 24,000 square foot facility which offers storage space for the Meadowhall retailers and additional services such as preparation of merchandise for the shop floor including stock-tagging and deshrouding.

Vanessa Hope, business development manager at British Land, said the company wanted to increase the warehouse's efficiency and so give retailers a way to maximize sales floor space, increase sales and reduce costs by cutting down on the number of stock deliveries per week.

Previously the British Land marketing team had discovered research saying guaranteed stock availability was the most important thing to people when shopping. "The change was on the back of that," said Hope.

British Land chose Manhattan Associates' Warehouse Management for Windows package from a shortlist of four vendors, said Hope, because of its ability to provide retailers with real-time information. It was also impressed by the package as it can easily scale up or down depending on the number of retailers in the centre: "There are no cost implications to scaling," she said.

The system took three months to implement and was up-and-running by September 2004. Since then, both British Land and the Meadowhall retailers have noticed several benefits.

For retailers, the system gives them more information about which products are moving fastest and thus "helps them maximize stock availability and range", said Hope.

Because large items can be stored permanently in the ARC - and picked up by shoppers when they're leaving the centre - it lets retails make the most of their sales space.

Hope said one of the features retailers like most is remote access via the web and a wireless (802.11g) system. Shop workers are given handheld devices which they can use to scan items in the shop when, for instance, the item is sold. That information is then sent wirelessly to the ARC so the warehouse workers know the item needs to be replenished.

The web access means both shop workers and the retailer's head office can log onto the warehouse management system from any desktop PC to check on inventory.

For British Land, the Manhattan system has improved the productivity of the warehouse workers, who also carry wireless handhelds, as the system prioritises their stocking-taking work and helps them find merchandise quickly.

Also important to British Land from a corporate social responsibility angle, Hope said, was that the system alleviates pollution and congestion around the centre: the number of weekly deliveries required has been reduced because the warehouse now runs more efficiently.

"Retailers in the past delivered every day to centre. We can now consolidate deliveries to two or less per week," she said.

British Land wouldn't reveal the value of the deal other than to say it was a "big investment," and the most tangible return on that investment is increased sales for Meadowhall retailers.

The Meadowhall clothing and footwear shop USC, for example, said because the right stock is available it was able to beat a recent sales target by 240 per cent. Another shoe seller has said that after the Manhattan system was installed, sales rose 32 per cent over the previous year.

Retailers have also been able to save money by reducing early morning staff and eliminating the need for back-of-house staff because ARC staff prepare merchandise for show floor.

Hope said: "We do know we have a number of retailers who previously had staff in from 07:00 in the morning don't have that anymore. They don't start work until 09:00 because we receive products for them [in the ARC] from 06:00 to 09:00."

And as Hope explains: "If retailers have increased spend, ultimately it makes the centre more of a destination for retailers."

She said British Land has had "numerous requests" to set the system up at other shopping centres but, at present, plans are to deliver from ARC to other cities near Sheffield: "We'd rather do that right now than set up new one," Hope said.