32 CASESTUDY
THORNTONS OVERHAULS IT INFRASTRUCTURE
Specialist confectionery retailer optimises store replenishment to achieve signifi cant savings
Our business is quite seasonal, so it’s critical to have a system in place that enables us to react to sharp peaks or troughs in demand.
replenishment during its busy seasons and promotional- pushes, to support its growing multi-channel offerings, and to ensure that product data derived from its manufacturing systems was ‘retail ready’. Thorntons’ business, and therefore its systems, had been built historically with a focus on production rather than its retail business. Store replenishment was manual and its existing IT infrastructure, built over many years, was made up of a number of disparate legacy systems with limited integration. As a result, the systems were not fl exible enough to produce sales and forecast data that would enable production to adapt its schedules to demand. Thorntons’ products use the fi nest ingredients, which in turn, means having a shorter shelf life, so too many products had to be ‘reduced to clear’ due to a mismatch of forecast to demand coupled with a lack of visibility of store stock levels. Thorntons provides customers in its own stores and
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franchisees with a wide range of products and individual services that include personalised gift wrapping and free icing of messages, whereas the supermarkets and convenience stores provide Thorntons product in places that are convenient for the customer. The company needed a new IT backbone for its retail
operations that would enable it to differentiate between its retail sales and sales to its commercial customers, systems that would cater for its strong seasonal and promotions-driven business model, as well as deliver real-time visibility of inventory across its own stores. In conjunction with EDS, Thorntons created a multi- discipline steering committee that helped the business in its selection process for new systems.
horntons, a UK High Street chocolatiers, selected Aldata’s Replenishment and Master Data Management (MDM) solutions to optimise store
Jim McLauchlan, Thorntons programme manager, said:
“We wanted the replenishment of store stocks to be managed more effi ciently so stock could be distributed better across the business. We were also looking to cut the number of systems suppliers we dealt with so we could manage our systems infrastructure more easily and minimise costs.” As part of a two-stage project, Thorntons fi rst replaced core systems in its head offi ce and warehouses to put in place the necessary retail IT backbone. This saw the implementation of Aldata MDM to provide the core data functionality and retail and commercial ordering systems. Subsequently, after a seven-month project managed directly by the Thorntons team, Aldata Replenishment went live across the company’s own stores to improve allocation, inventory management and to automate store replenishment across its entire retail estate. “We wanted to implement a system that would
cover multichannel operations within Thorntons including retail, franchise and commercial,” said McLauchlan. “Aldata provides us with a view of our stocks and sales, and enables us to effectively manage fl uctuations in demand. Our business is quite seasonal, so it’s critical to have a system in place that enables us to react to sharp peaks or troughs in demand.” “The roll-out of Aldata Replenishment has been the
key to driving ROI [return on investment] from the new system,” said McLauchlan. “We were particularly pleased that the Thorntons project team were able to complete the roll-out across the entire Thorntons estate within seven months. And signifi cantly, with limited disruption to store operations.” He added: “Since going live with Aldata Replenishment, we have seen a fall in discounts by 45% and wastage by 35% on items directly related to best before issues. We are now able to better manage our inventory across the business and, signifi cantly, we’ve also seen a 13% saving in store time.” Following systems investment within the business,
Thorntons has seen signifi cant improvements during what has been a diffi cult economic period. With Aldata acting as the retail IT backbone integrated into the company’s new electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) system, Thorntons is able to pursue its strategy of making its products available to more customers throughout the country and is now able to introduce new initiatives, such as the sale of non-Thorntons manufactured products through its various retail channels.
RETAIL TECHNOLOGY MARCH/APRIL 2010
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