Wild Oats Natural Foods Produces Healthy Profits - Continued

The Benefits
With the new solution in place, Wild Oats can now handle a much greater number of products on a larger database. Data integrity is also far more secure and the Windows-based operating system has proved much faster than the former proprietary equipment.One of the most significant areas of improvement has been in stock control. Accurate stock records are quickly and easily available, with the facility to track losses and returns.

The solution installed by Triple Software has given easy visibility of stock, enabling any shortfalls to be effortlessly pinpointed, resulting in considerable cost savings.Full reporting is available with printouts of each of the product categories, such as food, supplements, cosmetics, etc. giving visibility of sales and profit on each category and discounts on each line, allowing detailed analysis of individual product performance. Triple Software have developed an automatic data transfer facility to link into Wild Oats own customised sales package to give the company a faster and even more detailed sales analysis tool.

Mike Abrahams, partner and former Chairman of The National Association of Health Stores, commented, “Since the Triple Software and Toshiba system was installed last year we have improved visibility of short-dated stock, saving us thousands of pounds on wastage of stock with short life spans, such as yogurts. The improved stock control is critical to us, especially with our large number of product lines received from 150 suppliers”.

Referring to the Toshiba hardware, Mike said, “The robustness and the reliability of the Toshiba equipment is impressive. With a turnover of over £1m and 25 staff selling to approximately 450 customers a day, 6 days a week, continual trading is critical to the success of our business”.

The Future
Triple Software is currently developing a web ordering system which will enable Wild Oats customers to order directly from the supplier. These orders will be processed, packaged and shipped remotely, removing demands on Wild Oats stock holding and resulting in further significant cost savings for the company, as well as giving Wild Oats customers access to a much wider stock range.

A further development involves capturing customer data to build a database for CRM purposes, allowing Wild Oats to build a two-way communication with loyal customers and offer tailor-made promotions to reward existing loyal customers.

Mike Abrahams concluded, “In general the support we have received from Triple Software has been excellent, with immediate responses to all our requirements. We are confident we have a future-proofed solution in place, ready for our planned growth and improvements to our business”.