Anthony Squires employ mobile technology that’s as cutting edge as the suits they sell!

Background

Established in Melbourne, Australia in 1893, the Stafford Group has built a reputation of excellence in the manufacture of leading edge menswear. The company has long embraced emerging technologies in the development of manufacturing processes, and is committed to the vision of achieving “World Best Practice” in competing at the very top of the industry.

Anthony Squires is one of Stafford's best known brands, retailing suits and men’s apparel through a chain of 22 high-end outlets throughout Australia. 18 of these retail outlets operate as concessions within the David Jones group of department stores.

Anthony Squires employees about 120 staff, and operates from a head office in the North of Melbourne, Australia. The brand’s main clientele are the top-end of the menswear market, who value exquisite style and premium quality over price. In order to meet and exceed this market segment’s demand for the very best quality, and despite the industry trend to relocate production facilities to the Far East, Anthony Squires garments are still manufactured in Australia.

As a long-standing IBM i user, The Stafford Group uses various ERP applications to manage their warehouse, financial and distribution operations. Their IBM i investments have provided the platform to develop systems that have managed and facilitated the company’s continuing growth.
 

Challenge

Anthony Squires’ David Jones concession outlets have traditionally had limited access to Stock on Hand (SOH) information, as all transactions go through David Jones’ POS systems. A simple task such as enquiring on current stock holdings in-store or at the warehouse level therefore, required a call to Head Office, where they were reliant on an available customer service officer to manually process the request and check stockholding. With customers awaiting answers on availability of items, this caused considerable stress, and was impossible during busy periods in the stores. The impact on revenue, and on Anthony Squires reputation as a technological innovator, coupled with the cost of tying up head hoOffice resources in manual stock-checking, was significant. Stores in the Western states were also hamstrung by time differences, being unable to fulfill customer stockcheck requests late in the afternoon.

Anthony Squires Financial and IT management took the decision to source an automated solution to this issue. Initially, they issued laptops to the 2 largest concession outlets, however this proved to be unworkable from a security perspective, as David Jones were reluctant to allow the laptops to be kept close to the registers. This solution had the added disadvantage of providing retail staff with stockholding information via the green-screen ERP application, which would require additional training and support.
 

Solution

The company therefore evaluated mobile-access solutions from a number of vendors, and eventually selected looksoftware’s solution for it’s ease of use from both a development and end user perspective. The solution incorporates the newlook developer tool and the lookserver deployment tool to create a user-friendly graphic interface for the IBM i front-end, that’s accessible via an iPhone placed in each concession.


Anthony Squires' RPG developer created a basic application to allow concession staff to access SOH and other general information. This application was then modernized with newlook, and deployed to the iPhones with lookserver. On April 8th 2010, the first two stores came online for a two-week trial period. Following the success of this trial, access was rolled out to the remaining stores, the last of which went live on 16th of May 2010. The entire roll out was therefore achieved in 6 weeks, including development of the RPG application, and modernizing with newlook. This is a remarkable achievement, given that the majority of concession retail staff described themselves as being “computer-illiterate”. A staff member in one store had never used a mobile phone! The newlook front end was therefore designed for intuitive access with minimal keying and navigation required on the iPhones. Security of access was achieved via the IBM i’s standard protocols.
 

Benefits

Anthony Squires has recorded a significant decrease in calls to head office customer service staff as a result of the automated stock-check facility. This has resulted in an increase in available resources at both head office and store level, increasing productivity in both areas. Anthony Squires now has a competitive advantage over other concession store holders, as they can enquire on stock availability and place new stock or transfer orders whilst the customer waits. Customers are said to have been impressed with the automated system, which saves them time, and very often a trip to another store. It also ensures that they have access to Anthony Squires’ entire stockholding via a request at one outlet, and are far more likely to get the quality garment they require!

Rod Riley, IT Manager for The Stafford Group, said, “looksoftware is the total package in terms of ease of use, speed of implementation and end-user adoption. Overall, we have been very impressed with looksoftware’s products, training and support and, of course, the excellent outcome of our modernization project. We are working with looksoftware to provide online ordering facilities for other parts of the business, due mainly to the ease of use of their product range.”

Riley continued, “I would never have believed that in a few short months, Anthony Squires could have come so far. Menswear retail is a very old and traditional profession, however having looksoftware’s toolset available at such a competitive price and speed of implementation has allowed us to operate at the cutting edge of technology, instead of just reading about it.”