Shoppers aren’t the only ones feeling stress this holiday season. Retailers of all sizes are dealing with crowded stores, long hours and end-of-the-year sales goals. They’re coping with hiring challenges, supply chain shortages, inflation pressures and COVID-19 health threats. On top of all of that, there is the year-round worry over keeping customer and business information away from cyber crooks.
No wonder the retail industry ranks in the Top 5 of the nation’s most stressed industries, according a survey by payment processor Paychex.[1] Another survey shows 88% of retailers worry about employee burnout. No employee is immune, including owners and managers. “Retail manager burnout is real and challenging for any retail business. Time spent protecting the business and its employees against this will be a wise investment for any retail store,” business researcher Mark T. Fletcher says.[2]
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technology provides solutions to many internal holiday pressures weighing on retailers. If you’re a retailer — no matter how big or how small — and you’re not using ECM, you’re missing a golden chance to reduce stress. ECM enables you to:
- Free yourself and your employees from pushing paperwork and instead focus on higher-value work such as customer service, inventory management and strategic planning.
- Automate the collection, organization and day-to-day management of electronic and digitized print documents, including customer records, correspondence and business data.
- Limit access to information to only authorized employees. That’s a major benefit in an industry like retail where worker turnover rates are high.
Gain peace of mind with advanced data security
The list of retailers hit by data breaches this year include Hobby Lobby, Volkswagen, supermarket chain Wegmans, and apparel sellers Carter’s, Bonobos and Guess, according to researcher Security Intelligence.[3] The costs to a company can run into the millions of dollars after factoring the money spent on fines and penalties, credit monitoring services, lawsuits and information technology fixes, the researcher says. It isn’t only large retailers at risk. More than 40 percent of breach victims are small businesses, according to a Verizon study.
As a retailer, you need a content services system that can protect against data breaches and other cyber security threats. You’re trusted to protect sensitive customer and business information amid the challenges of high employee turnover, especially during and after the holiday season, and the constant threats from data hackers.
Data breaches also shake your patrons’ confidence. “No one wants to use a credit card at an organization where the customer thinks they cannot protect their data. And It all mushrooms from that initial security breach,” says John Ramsey, Senior Product Manager of MegaPath.[4]
ECM enables you to limit your risks: You can:
- Ensure data is always protected using encryption during transmission and storage.
- Control information access by user, project or document.
- Limit the ability of employees and vendors to view, change and share information.
- Restrict access to data with multiple layers of security.
Happier customers
Gaining fast, secure access to your customer and business information improves customer service. “We can respond to customers more quickly — in most instances, while they are still on the phone. From an operations efficiency and customer service perspective, our return on investment has been instantaneous. Plus, we expect to save more than $45,000 in the first year with PaperVision®Enterprise. We couldn’t be happier” says Kyle Smith, Special Projects Manager of CAPCO Tile & Stone.
Simplify and save by safely and effectively linking all of your locations
How much time and money are you spending to collect, manage and store customer and business records from multiple store locations? Want to cut those costs and, in the process, start benefiting from a much better approach to information management? In addition, important business information can be instantly and securely collected, accessed, searched and shared across the entire company, linking together central and regional offices, stores, administrative departments and warehouses.
ECM enables you to implement this easy, cost-saving, ultra-fast information network to keep everyone up to speed on invoices, work orders, daily sales reports, planning documents, quarterly business updates and more.
For example, documents such as paper invoices and work orders can be easily scanned at store locations with key information automatically extracted and integrated electronically into centralized business applications for companywide access. The original documents are digitized and stored electronically. The system also can process emails and other electronic information.
Information managed electronically is more secure, reducing the risk of costly data breaches and lost documents. Other significant savings come from much lower labor costs related to document handling and information searches and an end to delivery and mailing charges, document storage and warehouse fees, filing space needs and more. Learn more about the how much you can save by watching this short video, “The True Cost of Paper”.
“From an operational efficiency and customer service perspective, our ROI has been instantaneous.” says Smith, the special projects manager of CAPCO Tile & Stone. CAPCO operates multiple retail locations across the Rocky Mountain region. It turned to ECM to replace its old system of using manual processes to manage customer files, invoice and accounts payable records. CAPCO reports that using ECM shortened the time to find customer data to 2 minutes from 15 minutes, improved data accuracy and freed up the equivalent of one worker a year to perform higher-value tasks. Read the full CAPCO Tile and Stone case study.
Enhance business, supply chain and inventory efficiency, Digitech Systems
Managing supply chains efficiently, quickly introducing products and maintaining inventory accuracy are essential to meeting customer service expectations. ECM tools eliminate paper-based record keeping processes that stifle productivity and profitability. Features like easy keyword search, electronic distribution and E-Forms add to efficient business practices. Use ECM to:
- Scan, index and organize documents to simplify management.
- Instantly retrieve any document, including email, to answer questions quickly.
- Distribute information electronically via email or secure internet connection rather than copying, faxing or mailing.
Investments in ECM technology become a competitive edge. Not only can you save money through operations, but opportunity for sales increases due to enhanced customer service and process efficiency. Implementing ECM enables you to reduce management, storage and personnel costs.
Lower employee stress by offering
effective remote work options
As with most industries, the retail sector employs many workers who are able to work remotely. Central office staff, buyers, marketing team members and general office support workers represent a large share of the retail workforce. Allowing qualifying employees to work at least some days from home during the holiday season is one of the stress-reduction strategies recommended by job counseling site The Balance Careers. Among the benefits, the time saved from commuting lets workers better manage their own holiday season demands, author Susan M. Healthfield says in the website’s report on ways to reduce employee stress.
“Want to keep productivity and employee spirits positive during the holidays? Are you looking for ways to relieve holiday-related stress? You can start by not causing stress. As an employer, you control many of the variables that create holiday season stress for people,” Heathfield says.[5] ECM enables effective remote work and collaboration by providing fast, secure 24x7x365 access to any document from anywhere using a smartphone, laptop or virtually any other device. Learn more about ECM for Remote Work.
Stay competitive
Using content services tools keeps you competitive with your peers — and puts you ahead of many of them. Retailers must continually maximize efficiencies to stay in business. ECM allows you to automate document handling and business processes, accelerate orders and speed customer service. The holidays are the busiest and most pressure-filled time of the years for retailers. Don’t keep adding to the stress by struggling through with outdated information management processes.
- Retrieved from: Work More or Stress Less? | Paychex ↩︎
- Retrieved from: How to Deal With Retail Manager Burn Out (ezinearticles.com) ↩︎
- Retrieved from: Cost of a Data Breach: Retail Costs, Risks and More To Know (securityintelligence.com) ↩︎
- Retrieved from: Retail.pdf (cstdata.com) ↩︎
- Retrieved from: 16 Tips for the Employer to Reduce Employee Holiday Stress (thebalancecareers.com) ↩︎
Related Links:
- Learn more about the benefits of ECM for Retail in this industry brief
- Not sure how to compare Digitech Systems’ solutions to other products? Read through Keypoint Intelligence’s Buyers Lab report on PaperVision.com’s Platinum rating!
- Visit PaperVision.com to learn more about how you can manage documents in the cloud.
- Learn how ECM helps you manage and store payment information securely and accurately by reading our Check 21 Compliance Brief and Credit Card Compliance Brief.
