Trotters, a family run children’s store established 29 years ago, has six stores and an online shop and has increased its ecommerce sales growth by 50% year on year.
In 2018 Trotters relaunched its eCommerce website and updated their retail management software to provide enhanced stock management and new shop tills. It chose two leading retail software platforms to support the project; Shopify Plus for e-commerce and Eurostop for electronic point of sale (EPoS), stock control and fulfilment.
The retailer also chose TIDE, a cloud-based subscription service that connects business systems, integrates data and automates processes. For Trotters, TIDE integrates Shopify Plus and Eurostop, automating a number of key business processes.
The challenge: Joining up Bricks & Mortar with Ecommerce
To operate efficiently and maximise customer satisfaction Trotters needed to ensure the fulfilment of orders taken in Shopify were closely integrated with their physical stock management in Eurostop. Integration was key in operating as a single, digitally driven business by avoiding the following issues:
- Inaccurate Stock management: Each channel needs to know what stock is available to sell and be able to sell stock allocated to a different sales channel if it is available
- Inefficient Sales Reporting: ordering new stock needs to be efficient, requiring automated consolidation and reporting of sales through different channels.
- Tardy Order Fulfilment: customer information collected online or instore needs to be accurate and consistent across all channels. Trotters fulfilment needed to accurately match each customer with the right stock, ensuring timely delivery
- Error Prone Refunds: returns and refunds have different representations in Shopify and Eurostop, making it complex to accurately refund customers. This problem is magnified by the different ways the two systems handled various currencies.
The solution: Connecting, integrating and automating
TIDE provided the following business benefits:
- Accurate Stock Synchronisation Across all Channels: Warehouse management at Trotters is more efficient and cost effective as they can now share and allocate, rather than set aside, stock between shops and their ecommerce channel.
- Real-time Consolidation of all Sales Transactions: stock ordering is optimised as all sales are centrally integrated into Eurostop as soon as they are made in Shopify, ensuring consolidated performance reporting, analysis and ease of reconciliation.
- Accurate and Timely Fulfilment: Customer Satisfaction is driven by the reputation for getting the correct product delivered on-time. When an online order is received in Shopify, the fulfilment process in Eurostop is automatically initiated. Accurate information about each customer, their order and payment are integrated into Eurostop, preventing inaccuracies. Trotters can offer the level of service customers expect.
- Accurate Handling of Returns and Refunds; with up to 30% of online sales returned and Shopify enabling worldwide sales, it’s critical that Eurostop and Shopify have a common view of what product has been returned, which customer returned it and what refund is due. Providing a secure and accurate algorithm TIDE translated the way refunds were administered differently in Shopify and Eurostop. This required the implementation of sophisticated business rules for handling multiple currencies.
The result: 12 months after launch
Trotters now has a single, transparent data environment that enables their business to be more customer centric. Integrating their two new systems has been a resounding success producing astounding rates of growth.
“Integrating and automating has been crucial for our ecommerce to work.,” says Joanna Morrison-Wood, Ecommerce Manager at Trotters. “Our website has now become another branch and we can seamlessly handle periods of stress such as low stock or high levels of sales. We are currently tracking 50% growth year on year. We couldn’t have done that without migrating to Shopify and that wouldn’t have been possible without TIDE.”
“Successful retailers offer a customer centric service and ensure that the systems they chose deliver and work hard for them,” adds Nic Snape CEO of TIDE. “To do that they need to connect, integrate and automate them so that their efforts and time are resourcefully used, and their customers’ expectations are delivered.”
