In its quest for the perfect customer transaction, Fired Earth found the perfect solution in OneOffice from Strategix.

"Today’s customers are both well-informed and understandably demanding,” states the commercial director of Fired Earth, Neil Stockton. “They want greater choice, quality and inspiration, combined with a highly personal service. We are constantly striving to improve the level of information we have on hand to meet these demands.”

For Fired Earth Interiors, this means not only stock availability and specification information for its wide and varied product range, but also customer information such as past purchases and preferences.

Part of the Aga Food Service Group, Fired Earth Interiors is the UK's leading retailer of inspirational interiors. It is famous for its exclusive handcrafted products for the home and boasts over 65 showrooms throughout the UK, and Europe which stock a wide variety of product categories. These include tiles for every home environment, as well as bathroom suites and showers , interior and exterior paint wood flooring, fabrics, and home accessories such as china, candlesticks and lighting.

Neil Stockton continues: “It got to a stage where we had to accept that our current level of investment in technology wasn’t going to meet our increased expectations. This meant we had to substantially upgrade our system capability to deliver all the aspects of customer relationship management we wanted.”

Stockton and his colleagues started looking for a technology solution that offered the best of both worlds by linking traditional notions of service and customer satisfaction - with innovation and choice. It was a short search.

“It was obvious we needed to extend and integrate our back office functionality to create a much more satisfactory customer-facing experience,” Stockton continued. “We knew that Strategix had considerably enhanced their supply chain management solution to embrace all aspects of customer relations management with a new product called ‘OneOffice’.”

According to Stockton, another factor that confirmed Strategix as an obvious choice was that he didn’t have to instigate a complete system overhaul in order to benefit from the enhanced functionality. Consequently, OneOffice began rolling out to over 150 users across the business in May 2004. The roll-out involved the central office site along with the UK network of showrooms.

OneOffice is a new generation of supply chain management software that combines all aspects of Fired Earth’s operation into one view. It boosts the productivity and effectiveness of all Fired Earth Interiors staff by giving them real-time access to stock information, customer details and order status. As a result, it ensures every customer experiences ‘the perfect transaction’.

OneOffice uses a unique technology called Active Intelligence to keep everyone in the loop by providing each user with information that is both timely and relevant to the user’s role and current task. This enables sales advisors, for instance, to maximise sales opportunities, speed up the retail process and increase customer satisfaction.

One of the features that particularly benefits OneOffice users is the ‘dashboard’ function. This is a powerful and flexible mechanism for building customised, context-sensitive information into WorkSpace, the OneOffice user interface. Dashboards consist of web-pages that are displayed within panels in WorkSpace. It can be configured to display key information to the user in the context of the task they are performing. For example, when a sales person selects a customer record, it can automatically show the previous sales orders, contact notes and specific product information the customer is interested in, this supports underpins the delivery of an the enhanced customer experience.

Stockton elaborates: “This all-round view of each and every customer will enable us to offer new products to customers at the point of sale, as well as deliver relevant product information and installation specifications.”

By implementing OneOffice, Fired Earth Interiors is also making its warehouse operation more efficient. This will enhance customer service through more timely shipments and improved visibility of available stock, as well as faster and more accurate handling of product returns.

It works like this: a new customer walks into the store and enquires about a particular product for their home make-over. If it is not in stock at the showroom, the product can be instantly checked for specification, price and availability and the order fulfilled by the sales person. When appropriate, the customer’s details are set up on the OneOffice system at point of sale by the sales advisor. The customer’s transaction history and notes are now available across the whole business, including each showroom, enabling outstanding levels of customer service.

“Our sales advisors typically engage in quite long sales sessions, frequently over an hour or so,” Stockton continues. “Often, the customer returns several days later to progress the home improvement project. OneOffice means that now any sales advisor can demonstrate efficiency and professionalism by remaining informed and in touch with any customer requirements.”

Stockton added that some of their customers undertake quite large home make-overs that involve several rooms and a wide range of products. This is where OneOffice is invaluable in assisting the customer with future choices and decisions. With all previous customer and product information readily on-hand, sales advisors can offer rapid, relevant and accurate advice - such as which tiles are most suitable for an existing kitchen or which bathroom products will best fit the customer’s bathroom dimensions.

“In the past, the showroom wouldn’t have visibility of product information,” Stockton claims. “They would have to ring up head office or refer to brochures and leaflets for product information. By giving all our staff a consistent and comprehensive view of every customer and customer order, OneOffice is giving us the proactive, personalised and consistent customer service we have been striving for.”

Fired Earth continues to maintain a close working relationship with Strategix which supports the company with advice and system tweaks as the occasions demands. Stockton concludes: “I am convinced that OneOffice is improving Fired Earth Interiors overall business efficiency and helping to drive our ambition to become the UK's most inspirational retailer.”

Lessons learnt
• Having accurate and consistent customer information readily available to sales advisors eliminates mistakes on pricing, speeds up the sales cycle and delivers an outstanding customer experience.

• Immediate access to product availability and specification information provides the ‘added-value’ factor in delivering professional and efficient customer service.

• Using technology as an enabler successfully links traditional notions of service and customer satisfaction - with innovation and choice.

• Delivers outstanding ROI through greater efficiency, satisfied customers, repeat orders, less stressed staff, improved profit margins – and keeping ahead of the competition.