Outlet PC embraces omnichannel retail with Openbravo
Openbravo, together with the experience and involvement of our partner, has allowed us to transform our good ideas into changes that have had a real impact on business and sales.
Openbravo, together with the experience and involvement of our partner, has allowed us to transform our good ideas into changes that have had a real impact on business and sales.
Marc Estrem, CIO, OUTLET PC
ELECTRONICS RETAILER DEDICATED TO LOW EVERYDAY PRICES AND HIGH CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ONLINE AND IN STORES
OUTLET PC, a company belonging to the Ticnova Group, was born in Reus,Tarragona in 2008 during the economic crisis with the concept of offering consumers the opportunity to purchase reconditioned items no longer considered sellable in traditional distribution channels because of aesthetic defects, damaged packaging or in liquidation. Initially, the store specialized in consumer electronics (laptops, desktops, tablets, smartphones, printers, etc.), but its rapid success allowed the company to quickly expand its business model to include other product categories: household appliances, homewares, DIY, stationery, etc. The company currently has nine physical stores, which are located mostly in Catalonia and are visited by several thousand buyers each day. It also manages online stores in several European countries including France, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Germany as well as Spain, processing several hundred online orders each day.
THE CHALLENGES
The management applications that OUTLET PC had used since it began could no longer support the rapid growth and future needs of the company due to significant functional deficiencies and technological obsolescence. Additionally, the exponential growth in the number of live products was also pushing the capacity and performance of these outdated applications to their limit.
This resulted in frequent outages, inefficiencies in cash closures, poor visibility of the profitability of items purchased from different distributors and manufacturers, duplication and errors in warehouse operations, and significant hidden costs that impacted profits. In addition, store applications were not integrated in real time, so data on sales and daily margins could not be analyzed until the next day.
In this context, a modern, agile and scalable solution was needed to integrate all the sales channels, along with purchasing, warehousing and distribution to stores, and business analytics.
THE SOLUTION
Scalable, agile and flexible solution, capable of supporting growth plans
Openbravo offers complete coverage and integration of OUTLET PC operations, including the management of store sales, integration with PrestaShop for online sales, integration with several logistics operators (Correos Express and SEUR), as well as purchase management, central warehouse management, and the planning and execution of deliveries to physical stores.
The second phase of the project covered the technical support service for the stores, the integration of Undersat (a route planning and optimization application for the home delivery of large home appliances from stores), real-time integration with Google Shopping, and reverse logistics in the post offices through Correos Express.
Integrated business analytics
All the relevant data generated by the corporate information system, together with those of external sources such as Google, can now be integrated into Power BI to facilitate the centralized decision-making process.
THE RESULTS
Centralized management of product assortment
By adopting Openbravo, the company can now manage tens of thousands of different products quickly and easily. Changes in product characteristics and prices are carried out centrally and are available instantly in the physical stores as well as online, which avoids errors and improves the evaluation and purchasing process.
Improved inventory visibility and more efficient logistics increase customer satisfaction
Downstream incidents in the store distribution process have been reduced to practically zero, as the preparation and packaging process in the plant is now carried out with double verification using barcodes.
The number of confirmed but unfulfilled orders — due to discrepancies between the stock in the system and the physical stock — has been drastically reduced by having the inventory updated in real time with a high level of accuracy (99.99%).
A faster and smoother shopping experience
Openbravo’s point-of-sale solution allows OUTLET PC staff to focus more on customer service and offer a more convenient and faster shopping experience. The customer data is available in all stores, which avoids duplication and speeds up the purchase.
Likewise, the average time that customers need to wait has been considerably reduced and cash closures are now carried out quickly and without incident.
Deployment of new online and physical stores in record time
The registration and configuration of new online or physical stores can now be done in record time thanks to the multi-organization, multi-language and multi-tariff features of the solution.
Detailed and centralized view of business status
A wide variety of data — sales, margins, visits, user reviews, stock levels, turnover, returns, etc. — can now be presented graphically in personalized dashboards, providing information that is up-to-date, relevant and actionable according to different organizational roles.
The solution allows the cumulative profitability of purchases to be accurately measured according to different dimensions — supplier, item, period, family, etc. — after taking into account the purchase cost and provisions made for different concepts.
Omnichannel-ready
The ability to prepare online orders in stores and the other cross-channel capabilities of the solution help OUTLET PC advance in its omnichannel strategy.
The system supports different delivery options, such as Buy Online and Pick-up in Store (BOPIS), and other omnichannel scenarios, such as in-store purchase of products from central warehouse with delivery to the store itself or directly to the consumer, etc.
