F Hinds: Blending the on-line and in-store offering

Today’s consumer and their expectations are rapidly changing and both multi-channel retail and omni-channel experience have become the norm. In-store experience has become powerful with its social, sensory and personal elements but blurring the channel boundaries has been further fuelled by click and collect; providing customers with the greater choice offered online together with the convenience of trying, feeling and buying in-store.

In 2013 F.Hinds, a family run independent jewellers made the decision to overhaul their legacy technology and move to a Cloud based retail platform. With over 116 stores across the UK employing nearly 1000 staff, they wanted to create a single, modular and scalable system to operate all its business and online and instore sales channels for:

• Enhanced customer experience, choice and convenience

• Real time product availability in-store and online

• Cost efficiency

Like many businesses, F Hinds’ click and reserve service proved popular with customers and for the first time the jeweller’s e-commerce and in-store sales channels became entwined but with no underlying system integration. The complexity and strain on resources to deliver against heightened consumer expectations was a problem.

Top Three Priorities

1. Immediate visibility of every transaction
2. Operational efficiency
3. In-store and online integration

To meet short and long term objectives, F Hinds migrated to a single, Cloud platform to integrate its multi-channel inventory; synchronise in-depth Head Office reporting, warehousing, workshop management, CRM, e-Receipts, multi-channel loyalty programs and gift cards and in-store digital aisles for extended produce choice.

Top Three Operational Benefits

1. Instant and accurate overview of every transaction status in real time across multiple channels
2. Quality and depth of reporting enabling deep data analysis profit improvement
3. Scalability for growth and new process and feature rollouts via the ease of Cloud which requires little resource and time

“The options and future are so vast. What we need is stability in something that always works in the middle and a single platform built on Cloud technology gives us this and more.” Paul Hinds, IT Director, F Hinds.