Leading Bookstore Services and Textbook Supplier Improves Inventory Levels Across All Retail Channels

Logistics Insight Asia - Industry News, 2/9/2008

JDA Software Group has announced that Follett Higher Education Group, a division of $2.4 billion Follett Corporation serving more than 800 college and university bookstores across North America, is reducing its order fill time by 30 percent with the help of JDA Software’s Merchandise Operations and Performance Management solutions.

Follett’s cross-channel business model requires Web orders to be picked from store stock with the help of store associates. “We’ve experienced a constant, rapid increase in the ratio of online sales to in-store sales, causing an increase in store labor costs as more personnel are needed to pull inventory for online orders,” explained Tom Dillon, vice president merchandising systems, Follett Higher Education Group.

In an effort to gain more efficient operations, Follett turned to JDA Software’s integrated Merchandise Management System (MMS) and Win/DSS solutions. The software established core inventory control capable of gathering, integrating and distributing data throughout Follett’s organization. JDA’s point-of-sale solution, Win/DSS, is fully integrated with MMS and is capable of processing Web order returns, which improves the customer experience compared to being routed to a service desk.

“Our order fulfillment time on over 1.2 million annual orders has decreased by 30 percent, resulting in both labor cost savings and improved customer service as Follett associates are able to be redirected to the sales floor,” Dillon said.

Follett is also leveraging JDA’s Performance Analysis application to fully optimize merchandising decisions. The solution allows Follett to transform its business data into meaningful information that is used to drive its business success. Follett utilizes Performance Analysis to spend less time digging for the data and more time analyzing the numbers for fast and slow movers, sell through and inventory levels (in weeks of sales) to achieve optimum in-store merchandise availability. This ensures that the shelves are stocked with the right amount of merchandise at any given time.

JDA Software Group, www.jda.com