Grin and bear it

Audit and Operations Management (AOM) improves productivity at Build-A-Bear Workshop.

In a breakout session at the recent BT Expedite and Fresca client conference, Build-A-Bear Workshop's Michael Segura flew in from the States to talk about the benefits of using Epicor's AOM solution.

In 2001 Build-A-Bear Workshop was using a legacy point of sale (POS) audit system which wasn't flexible enough to keep up with the company's growth. It was also slow and time-consuming, as Michael describes: "We had one auditor for every 25 stores at the time and the manual approach restricted our operations. We were limited to just cash analysis and, because of the slow, tedious reporting system, problems were discovered too late."

The company went live with the Sales Audit module of AOM in 2002. It was initially integrated with a third party POS system but this has since been replaced by the Store 6 application. The benefits were immediately obvious, with results in several key areas:

1. Improvements in all core auditing functions
2. With one auditor for every 100 stores, staff are four times more productive
3. Exception reporting catches errors up front
4. The system can easily handle ever-growing volumes
5. The company now has much better business analysis

"But most significantly," says Michael, "is the fact that we now have clean, correct data flowing into our downstream systems."

By consolidating data and mapping it consistently to other systems, Epicor's AOM solution:

• reduces integration costs
• highlights errors and speeds corrections
• streamlines data flow from POS and online to head office
• eliminates reconciliation issues
• minimises time and effort required for manual checking.

Michael says: "We've really benefitted from the solution's enriched capability. It's given us enhanced fraud control, improved data security, kept us PCI compliant and helped support our marketing and loyalty programmes."

In fact, the company is currently upgrading AOM to the latest version. "This will provide a single source for POS, sales audit and merchandising," explains Michael. "At the same time it'll take the worry out of under- or over-reporting sales and meeting the compliance standard. The system will also help streamline bank and credit card reconciliations and support our changing business requirements as we continue to grow."

Session host Mark Denton from BT Expedite explained that audit management is viewed differently in the US: "There's a real mix of systems and procedures used by UK retailers at present with every retailer having individual audit priorities. Over the past tough few months, these audit functions are moving to the forefront of retailers' minds – luckily AOM can easily be configured to meet an individual retailer's needs and requirements".

"What AOM gives you is a central view of transactional data across all channels. And, by flagging problems and exceptions, it means you can process things properly and that all data can be cleaned and corrected before going downstream. Ultimately it means you can make critical business decisions on the basis of facts, rather than guesswork."

Build-A-Bear Workshop fact file

• 375+ stores worldwide
• 7,000+ employees
• full online stores
• $500 million+ annual sales

What is Audit and Operations Management?

AOM is a suite of applications covering sales audit, central transactional reporting, loss prevention, voucher and gift card management and employee productivity and commissions management. It's a modular, out of the box solution that sits at the heart of your business, collating, checking and cleansing transactional data from web, store and call centres to ensure good data is sent downstream.

AOM provides a central repository for transactions and can flag exceptions or unusual patterns. Its results and reports can be tailored and sorted by various options, enabling audit teams to get to the heart of any issues immediately.