Rascal Case Study for The Southern Co-operative

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meeting the specific needs of

the southern co-operative

case study

rascal adopted a flexible approach to the relationship, ready and willing to tailor their approach to meet the specific needs of The Southern Co-operative

meeting the specific needs‌ Realising issues in-store regarding compliance, The Southern Co-op introduced rascal to 64 of its stores in August 2012.

Driven by operations, the system is now offering The Souther Co-op 95% compliance to category best practice.

simplicity rascal completed a national roll-out in August 2012 of its category management system to 64 of The Southern Co-operative stores.

This greatly simplified the magazines and news process and has given them far greater visibility of the category. rascal is intuitive, easy to implement and simple to use — greatly reducing paperwork, as well as reducing the time needed to manage the category in store by 5 hours per week.

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“rascal has been accepted by everybody within the store, they love it!

giving The Southern Co-operative the power to minimise stock losses and maximise category sales and profitability, delivering…

simplicity | visibility | control Optimised processes Reduced paperwork Easy to implement Intuitive to use

Store performance Bespoke reporting Credit due Non-range

Shrink & waste Store best practice Returns management Time spent in store

rascal is live and operational in 64 stores

Other parts of the business… the accounts, loss prevention and stock control, can also see the benefits, because of its simplicity and the ease in which we’ve been able to absorb it into our systems.

The results have been quite fantastic!”

David Young Operations Development Manager

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95%

visibility “It’s taken the mystery out of news and magazines. It seemed to be something of a black art, we hoped that things were being done, but had nothing that proved that people were delivering in store.

store compliance

Increased goods-in credit flow by £14.70 per store per week Increased returns credit flow by £44.07 per store per week Reduced copies not credited for being returned too late by

With rascal we now have the information on returns, we have information on unrecorded wastage and we are allowed to get detail on compliancy that allows our Loss Prevention team to better manage the unknown stock loss.

Charles Miller Head of Retail Operations

79%

“We are projecting returns in the region of £500,000 a year reduction and overall credit control on the rascal project.”

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control “There’s now a lot of information and detail available from rascal for our category colleagues that enable them to deliver better ranging.”

Charles Miller Head of Retail Operations

“We’ve found that it has really improved the disciplines inside our store environment, not just for our store colleagues, but for our customers. They have found shopping the fixture much easier!”

Phil Ponsonby Chief Operations Officer for Food Retail & Services

…reducing shrink from improved shrinkage, waste Paul Rodford Group Financial Controller

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benefits

Positive impact on sales — due to increased category focus Improved shopper experience — tidy fixtures, tight range discipline, rejects unwanted product All functions across estate declaring benefits - category, retail operations, finance, IT, loss prevention and stock control

“I know that the financial results we’ve seen since it was introduced have been quite astounding!”

Phil Ponsonby

PDA functionality Goods-in item level scanning Goods-in range advice PDA driven returns advice Returns item level scanning Fixture scanning Stock take Store messaging

Chief Operations Officer for Food Retail & Services

Other functionality Claim and credit management Auto news claiming Comprehensive bespoke reporting Wholesale integration Stock balance data feeds Title, range and promotion management Store helpdesk

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improving the shopper experience…

“rascal has changed the way we do the news and mags completely.

It’s a lot more straightforward, a lot easier to use and it just makes the process a whole lot easier!”

Darren Kish Retail Business Manager

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as we see it pete kemble

jonty edwards

rascal has a come a long way in 10 years. Way back in 2002, we were operating a family run newspaper and magazine wholesale business, when we were approached by Tesco to assist them on their news and magazine category.

Our aim is to focus on driving results both for our retail partners and for the future growth and development of the rascal business.

managing director

Through this work we realised there was a gap in the market, helping retailers maximise profitability by ensuring their stores improve their compliance to the correct processes across their news and magazine category. Using our experience as wholesalers, we developed rascal, an automated method of scanning magazine returns using hand held PDAs in store, that ensures stores compliance to process and tracking of product returned to supplier.

Working with our retail partners, we have continued to develop the rascal system, refining processes and adding functionality, now offering a full end-to-end solution that drives real value to their business. We have recently relocated to a new head office in Milton Keynes and purchased Open Projects, our partner software developing house.

In 2012 we launched version 6 of our PDA software, bringing huge improvements in both the usability of the software as well as new and enhanced functionality. In the same year we launched rascal insight, our online reporting function, which improves the robustness, accessibility and flexibility of the information we provide to our retail partners.

The business now has a robust infrastructure in place for further expansion and we are all excited about the opportunities we are currently exploring with our retail partners to roll out rascal across categories beyond news and magazines.

sales director

We will do this by ensuring our people have the right skills in the right roles, underpinned by a culture that engenders collaborative and proactive relationships across all of our existing and future retail partnerships.

The scope of opportunity for the rascal business is vast. We are building upon our success by increasing penetration in the domestic retail market and extending the offering into categories outside newspaper and magazines.

Our vision is to identify international opportunities and work with our retail partners to explore areas where we may add value across their operations outside the UK.

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charley southon IT director

Sound technological systems underpin the rascal solution. Our aim is to ensure that we have the right people, process and technology in place to ensure our commitment to faultless service delivery and respond to our on-going customer needs. With our people it’s critical we ensure the depth and quality of our talent supports our ambitious growth strategy.

We continue to work collaboratively with our retail partners to ensure sound processes and to facilitate agile development. We will continue to invest in our system architecture and champion new technology to support our sales strategy. We will build upon the recent acquisition of our software development house to provide continuous improvement and innovation via on-going product enhancements.

pete kemble

jonty edwards

charley southon

rascalsystems.com

advanced mobile technology, giving retailers the power to minimise stock losses, maximise category sales and profitability.

For further information, please call: Jonty Edwards on

01908 283900

enquiries@rascalsystems.com