Home Timber & Hardware

Driving productivity through the creation of an online tradeshow ordering system

Completion Timeframe: 4 Months

Introduction

In 2016 Home Timber & Hardware (a subsidiary of Woolworths) realised completion of a journey to transform their inefficient, paper-based tradeshow ordering system. This case study serves to outline how Home Timber & Hardware, together with Pegboard, were able to eliminate approximately 1000 hours of labour associated with manually inputting orders, reduce costs by approx. 23%, and drive sales volumes by approx. 30%.

About Home Timber & Hardware

Home Timber & Hardware (HTH) is Australia’s third largest retail hardware chain. They are committed to delivering an exceptionally high level of customer service and expertise, and stock a wide range of quality timber, hardware and building materials. As a result, HTH is positioned in the market as the ‘go to’ specialist hardware store for both trades people and DIY enthusiasts.

HTH was launched in March 1993, as the result of a merger between Home Saver Timber & Hardware and Homestead Hardware. Since then, the company has grown to over 290 stores across Australia.

Paper-heavy processes

HTH invests heavily in holding annual tradeshow events, targeted at a large network of retail storefronts across Australia.

At these tradeshows, approximately 150 to 200 suppliers purchase stands from HTH and sell their wares to the retail attendees, with HTH managing the distribution of these purchases. These suppliers often provide attendees an exclusive tradeshow only price offering.

Prior to 2014, the tradeshow sales process was completely paper based. Each supplier would tediously write down orders and then place these orders with HTH after the tradeshow. The HTH staff would then proceed to manually enter these orders into their ordering system and ensure the goods were distributed to the correct retail storefront.

To make matters worse, tradeshow suppliers would also take orders for products that were not carried at the HTH Distribution Centre. In these situations, the supplier would have to place a ‘charge back’ order with HTH, which would need to be manually amended in the HTH ordering system by the internal sales staff.

These paper-based processes were unproductive and slow, and they were at high risk of discrepancies associated with manually inputting orders. There was also a potential for HTH to lose revenue from charge back orders on the day of the tradeshow, as there was no way to track order amounts and volume.

Hand writing orders also inhibited the number of orders suppliers were able to take during the tradeshow, directly impacting revenue.

What Home Timber & Hardware looked for to resolve this issue

Frustrated with their slow, manual processes and restricted revenue stream, HTH realised that something desperately needed to change. They began looking for an alternative ordering systems for their tradeshows that would

•  Automate their paper based ordering system
• Connect their sales and marketing and core business systems
• Aid the on-the-day ordering productivity for stores
• Ease the ordering process for suppliers Ease the ‘charge back’ sales process
• Reduce the administrative costs involved with paper-based processes
• Enable real time processing of orders
• Facilitate live tracking and reporting of sales activity during the Tradeshow

The Pegboard Solution

HTH engaged Pegboard after recognising that Pegboard’s SILicone and Pegboard7 products would facilitate the fulfilment of their online ordering system needs. Shaped through an initial in depth consultation and scoping sessions, the HTH ordering system was built on Pegboard SILicone architecture and the POS system on Pegboard7 and customised to suit HTH’s specific requirements.  

Pegboard SILicone enabled HTHs core business systems integration and live dashboard reporting to be: 

• Viewable on any devise allowing for and instant secured access for HTH team and relevant stakeholders.
• Able to bring together data from their ERP, BI, POS, CRM and Event Management systems seamlessly.
• Produce live to the second reports prior and during the Tradeshow for management and stakeholders to proactively react to relevant KPI's in place for the tradeshow.
• Flow data from the POS back into the core business systems automatically saving valuable time in processing of orders.
• Create report widgets during the show based on stakeholder requests as they happened.
• Export via SILicone endpoint reports to excel as required.

Overall project outcome for Home Timber & Hardware

The overall end result delivered to HTH was a highly efficient online ordering engine that delivered an intuitive and highly effective outcome for both HTH and its stakeholders, suppliers and store representatives. Pegboard was able to delivered measurable results, and satisfy all of HTHs KPI and functionality requirements.

• Successfully automated the paper-based ordering systems
• Increased sales volume during the tradeshow by 30%
• Increased on-the-day ordering productivity to four minutes per order
• Enabled the minute-by-minute tracking and reporting of tradeshow sales
• Created an easy to use online ordering system that was intuitively operated by suppliers during the tradeshow event
• Reduced print and administration costs by 23%
• Approximately 1000 hours of manual labour input time was eliminated due to real time processing of orders.
• 16% increase in charge back sales revenue from the ordering system
• Delivered ROI in less than 12 months

Bridget O’Conner
Communications Manager



Home Timber & Hardware plan to drive further functionality and productivity through Pegboard7 in 2017

The adoption of the Pegboard SILicone and Pegboard7 by both suppliers and stores was extremely successful, and generated unequivocally strong outcomes for HTH. However, discernible budget restrictions meant the automation of some HTH internal systems and additional features where not able to be implemented for the tradeshow event.

With a strong focus on driving greater efficiencies and outcomes into 2017, HTH are looking to continue improving their online ordering system even further with Pegboard.