Best Practices Awards 2017
400 customers are using the will-call option . They can go online and place an order or call it in , and pick it up for free . That ’ s great for local businesses .”
As the agency continues its aggressive store renovation and relocation process , DHL has greatly aided in improving the stocking process .
“ We ’ re able to put together orders based on the shelving layout in the store ,” says director of sales , marketing , merchandising and warehousing Nicole Brassard-Jordan . “ It ’ s many tractor trailers going in to stock the store and set up displays , so we may have 30 people unloading the trucks and stocking the store .”
In prior years , shipments would arrive with palettes destined throughout the store and onsite workers would be tracking down codes and matching them to diagrams . Now , an entire wall or aisle arrives in a single shipment .
“ It doesn ’ t get any easier than opening the back of a truck and having everything laid out based on a shelf set ,” Mollica says .
“ In the last six years we ’ ve increased our retail square footage by over 40 %, and every time we ’ ve opened or relocated a store we ’ ve reviewed our business practices to see what we can do better because there ’ s always room for improvement .”
— MICHAEL MILLIGAN , DEPUTY COMMISSIONER
INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY Over the past four years , the NHLC has undergone a strategic campaign to renovate and relocate its 79 stores , creating the need for upgraded information technology capabilities . As a result , the agency collaborated closely with the NH Department of Information Technology ( DOIT ) to enhance its technology and improve productivity as it opened a record six new stores in the summer of 2016 .
“ We have a 30-year-old back-end system , and our DOIT partners who work in this building have long had to mitigate risk for us ,” Brassard-Jordan says . “ There are risks from servers being here , from not having the proper pipeline for data transfer , etc … In years past , we would open a new store and the registers wouldn ’ t be ready , but that ’ s not the case anymore – everything is up and running the morning we do a soft opening . I ’ ve dealt with registers going down and the impact it has on customers . We don ’ t want that , and they ’ ve done an outstanding job of mitigating those risks for us .”
The agency ’ s work with DOIT has also reduced store outages due to network errors by 89 percent , created backup data communications at high-volume retail locations and deployed upgraded voice communication systems . And there ’ s more to come .
“ The biggest technology changes we ’ ll take advantage of haven ’ t happened yet ,” Mollica says . “ Our next generation system is a $ 30 million back- and front-of-the-house system we ’ re adding to our stores . Before we started implementing it , we couldn ’ t accept chip cards , offer certain discounts or institute a loyalty program . There was also no tie-in electronically between the stores and our advertising , but our new system will be able to do all that .”
The upgrades will also help the enforcement arm of the agency , which is already seeing improvement thanks to the use of tablets in the field .
“ Technology is the backbone of a lot of things the enforcement , licensing and education departments are doing ,” Milligan says . “ The geography and demographics of New Hampshire are difficult , with our 1.3 million people very spread out . When someone applies for a license and we do an inspection , we ’ ll soon be able to manage that effort in the field in real-time rather than having to check in with headquarters or file a physical report first . The last thing a business owner applying for a license wants to hear is that there will be a delay . So we ’ ll be better serving our customers , and we ’ ll be saving a lot of time and money too .”
EYE-CATCHING DISPLAYS In March of 2015 , the NHLC opened two 20,000-squarefoot Liquor & Wine Outlets anchoring welcome centers
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StateWays | www . stateways . com | September / October 2017