Sally Beauty Holdings Streamlines Store Execution and Communications
The beauty retailer invested in Reflexis workforce and time management tools to upgrade in-store technology, modernize retail operations and offer a high-quality customer experience across all its stores.
Zebra Success Story: Sally Beauty Holdings
Overview: Retail Challenge
Sally Beauty Holdings spent hours manually tracking stores’ activities and results via phone calls and emails, while district managers oversaw an average of 20 stores each. With over 8,000 products and no unified method of communication, execution of appropriate promotions, planograms and other tasks suffered from a lack of real-time visibility.
Benefits / Outcomes
Sally Beauty consolidated store systems to reduce third-party costs and streamline execution. The retailer also centralized communications to save time and effectively direct messages, while also improving line-of-sight for field and corporate managers.
Customer
Sally Beauty Holdings
Denton, Texas/USA
Industry
Retail
Solutions
About Sally Beauty Holdings
Sally Beauty Holdings is a leading beauty retailer, offering a range of high-quality products and tools for hair, nails and skincare. It operates over 5,100 stores worldwide under several banners, including Sally Beauty stores, which cater to consumers shopping for personal use, and CosmoProf Beauty stores, which distribute professional quality products to salons.
In order to provide the best possible experience for all its customers—individual and professional, now and in the future—Sally Beauty Holdings is investing in transforming its stores and upgrading in-store technology. As part of this investment, the company implemented Zebra solutions to modernize its retail operations and ensure a consistent, high-quality customer experience across all its stores and banners.
The Challenge
Like many retailers, Sally Beauty Holdings struggled with operational inefficiencies. With as many as 8,000 products in every store, its model is SKU-intensive. In the face of all these SKUs, store associates struggled to provide expert guidance, set planograms to vendor specifications and execute promotions for every product. However, with multiple store systems and communication channels, it was a challenge to ensure that associates were getting all the information they needed to accomplish this.
Field and corporate managers also had limited visibility into what was happening at the store level. At the same time, the company’s transformation and reorganization efforts resulted in district managers managing 20 stores each on average, up from 12. They spent hours trying to manually track stores’ activities and results via emails and phone calls.
Sally Beauty Holdings wanted its field managers, district managers and front-line staff to work smarter, not harder.
The Solution
To achieve this goal, Sally Beauty Holdings sought out a unified platform to digitalize and automate its processes, including store execution, activity planning, corporate-to-store communications and document sharing. The company selected Workcloud for its ability to give store associates a single, mobile touchpoint for every system they used over the course of the day. It managed clocking in, checking compliance updates from the corporate office and completing both routine tasks and one-off projects and promotions. Associates can access all the Zebra solutions in the user-friendly Workcloud Task Management My Work environment from store-provided devices.
Sally Beauty Holdings implemented Workcloud Real-Time Task Management, which empowered it to create a central activity calendar and track the execution of important tasks like planograms. The company also implemented Workcloud Docs, which enabled it to provide associates with easy access to vendor guidelines, compliance documentation, training resources and more. In addition, Sally Beauty Holdings implemented Workcloud Timekeeping Time and Attendance and Workcloud Scheduling.
“We were looking to also implement workforce management, so it was important that we had one platform that we could use with our stores,” says Sally Beauty Holdings’ Director of Store Operations. “[Zebra] had the platform that fulfilled all of the task, workforce and document repository requirements that we needed.”
The Zebra Difference: Outcome and Benefits
Implementing the Zebra solutions enabled Sally Beauty Holdings to reduce third-party costs, eliminate manual processes and save time for district managers, store managers and store associates.
Improved line-of-sight for field and corporate managers is another major benefit. “From a task standpoint, just the fact that we can measure how our stores are doing—planograms, as an example, being able to tell our vendors that this particular planogram has been completed,” the Director of Store Operations explains. “We can look at price changes, we can look at all of the different tasks that we’re putting out in our stores. It’s critical that we had that ability to see into the stores … without having to visit every store.”
Additionally, with mobile access to policies, operating procedures and vendor documentation in Workcloud Docs, store associates can easily answer questions and execute projects more efficiently. Equipped with a searchable, up-to-date knowledge center, associates can spend more time with customers, guiding them through the buyer’s journey.
