Metro
Metro Cash & Carry cuts labour costs and boosts customer service
Summary
Metro Cash & Carry, a division of Metro Group, the world's fourth largest retailer, has cut its labour costs by 3-7% and cut customer queues by 50% following a pilot using web-based Workforce Management software from WorkPlace Systems, a world leader in the development and supply of software solutions for Workforce Management.
Challenges
In 2002, Metro Cash & Carry, with a €25 billion turnover and 77,000 employees, began taking a hard look at its employee scheduling and forecasting methodology. It had largely been handling these tasks at store level using paper-based schedules, Excel spreadsheets and regional software solutions. Schedules were mostly based on historical sales figures. When sales were expected to spike, store managers would respond by increasing staff numbers with little scientific basis.
Berthold Steur, project manager at Metro Cash & Carry, says his company was convinced that putting this approach under the microscope would reveal inefficiencies that could be addressed with the implementation of a store-based labour scheduling and forecasting application.
Berthold Steur developed and issued an RFI with a list of about 150 questions on the specifications being sought. WorkPlace Systems scored the highest, with in excess of 90% of the requirements met. This process took about one year, and included a number of workshops and meetings as Metro narrowed down the field of vendors.
Solution
In March 2003 the company began a store pilot of WorkPlace Systems' labour scheduling and forecasting software. Initially, the solution would be rolled out only to checkout employees and then later to the other departments within the store. The project began with a seven-month design phase, followed by nine weeks of active implementation. The first four weeks of this was spent briefing upper level management on the impending project. Following that a week was spent preparing data for the stores, testing the system and checking the results. A further week was spent writing reports, training and uploading employee data and populating the system's Oracle 9i database. Week seven was spent fine-tuning the system, and by week nine both the system and a dedicated help desk were live.
Metro is now rolling out WorkPlace Systems' forecasting and scheduling solution across 517 sites, across 28 countries and in 18 different languages. With WorkPlace Systems' support, the system implementation is being performed by Metro's own IT group, following a period of training.
Key to the solution is the ability to build schedules based not simply on sales, but on items, invoices, registers, levels of customer service, centrally driven task management tasks, and historical data, among others. Metro now expects that as the roll out moves forward, greater efficiencies will be realised by an interface to the company's SAP HR and financial systems.
Features
One of the strengths of the WorkPlace Systems' solution is that it can meet the unique criteria, business practices and employment law in each of the countries that Metro trades in. The software is capable of handling complex region-specific rules e.g. different rates of pay in each country, local pay agreements such as triple time on the third Sunday of the month, and allocating hours in accordance with chosen working patterns and within statutory limits such as working time directives.
As a management tool the application produces powerful reports because it is integrated with all key data sources including Metro's SAP system, which holds all the staff data including skills, and the EPOS system, which holds all the sales data. Metro can centrally monitor all sites, at country level and identify which countries or regions are delivering better results, and then examine the reasons why.
Part of the solution included WorkPlace Systems' CST (Customer Service Tool) - this forms part of the till system, and requires direct input from the cashier. Metro wanted this implementation to help them improve customer satisfaction levels and cut queues in store to one person at the till and one waiting. The CST requires staff to input how many people are queuing, and then prompts the management to open another till when necessary.
Summary
Following the implementation of WorkPlace Systems' labour scheduling and forecasting software, labour savings of between 3% and 7% were achieved and some store managers benefited by spending up to 20 fewer hours per week, per department building forecasts and schedules.
Berthold Steur, project manager at Metro Cash & Carry, added,
"While the goal of the project was to increase the efficiency of the workforce and test a standard, harmonized solution for forecasting and scheduling applications, customers were the big winners. We realised a reduction of more than 50% in customer queues."
Integrated Solutions Magazine, 2004
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