Shapiro Luggage

What can you tell me about the information available in DSS and how it compares to information that was previously available?
DS: The best comparison at this particular point is that DSS combines the features of Retail Pro Reports and Profile. It also makes more information available. For example, I probably have between 60 classes and sub-classes in my gift department. Using Profile I could get the information for a particular segment but I could not profile the information for gifts as a whole as I can with DSS. Also I always wanted to know what my turn was for the gift department as a whole, and with DSS I can get all that information at once. DSS takes your data about an item or vendor and gives you better and faster information than Profile and Reports combined. This is quite an achievement because the old Profile and Reports in Retail Pro were terrific!

What can you tell me about data mining using DSS?
DS: I really like to view the clerk information to see who is selling what. In DSS I can drill down to the clerk level with the click of a button and view it by year or month. I can then sort it by clerk and see who does the most volume by clicking that particular column. I can rank the clerks in all my stores. I really like looking at the average ticket by clerk and seeing which sales clerks are selling better goods because I sell moderate and high-end merchandise. My better clerks are selling bigger tickets.

How have you been using the Compare feature of Retail Pro DSS?
DS: I have compared vendors, this year to last and over three years. I used it to compare receiving this year against last year and to compare Decembers. Or I use it to compare the first three months of this year to the first three months of last year. The value of DSS is that when I am comparing three time periods, I can shift to another view and compare locations without having to run a new comparison. You just drill down to the next element. There is no need to run multiple reports.

Has it changed the way you manage your business?
DS: With DSS I just leave it in the background and use it throughout the day by just toggling back and forth. For example, midday someone asks me a question or I need to run in an order or I’m talking to a manufacturer - in each instance, I just bring up DSS and the information is readily available. I don’t have to run reports when a rep comes to visit me. I can look up anything very quickly with DSS.

Have you had the chance to use it with any reps yet?
DS: I’ve used the information in negotiating for advertising money or some other program offered by the vendor. The reps I deal with have always been blown away with the data available from Retail Pro and when I showed them DSS they were simply dumbfounded by the information available.

Have you realized any benefits that particularly would relate to multi-store environments?
DS: It is very interesting for us to see discrepancies by store. My brothers and I really enjoy seeing the differences from store to store. It’s easy to know about the business volume but what you don’t know until you drill down and look at each store individually or compare all the stores are things like each store’s average ticket or transaction. One of the things that we have noticed is that newer stores and staff sell at a lower price point than the seasoned sales associates and stores. So DSS helps us see where we need more effort and training. You know this from the average ticket disparity and the average sold unit. DSS is fun and a good tool to use as you can look at a store’s situation and identify problems.

It seems like you use the Ranking feature quite a bit.
DS: I use the Ranking feature, and I also use the Sort function to put things in ascending or descending dollar value depending on how I want it. If I want to see the worst sellers instead of best sellers, I click on it and the arrow will face up with my worst item on top. Then I can move right over to sold units or sold quantities, click on that, and re-rank the same set of products, vendors or stores. Sorting is a great feature to get a quick view of something. Ranking on the other hand, gives more detail by including a column with the percentages.

Do you find any advantage with the pivoting feature?
DS: The advantage is that you can take a piece of information, such as what sold for January, and pivot the data to look at it from another view’whether it be by department, by location or by vendor. This happens instantly and helps you know all the elements about that selected piece of information. From a time standpoint you could never run a report that fast.

What you would you say to another retailer who was thinking about installing DSS?
DS: I think it is a great tool but you will only realize this by using it. I used to tell friends of mine in the luggage business who used Retail Pro how wonderful Profile was and they seemed to believe me even though they never used it. I’ve told a couple of them about DSS and that they should get it to deal with information overload. They should get DSS and use it if they really want to get on top of their business. A lot of small store owners say, ’why do I need all of that information? I know that about my business.’ The point is that you don’t know what DSS can do until you put it to work for you.

You mentioned information overload. Can you expand on that and how DSS deals with it?
DS: Just yesterday I was talking to someone about Retail Pro and they asked what kind of reports we used. He wanted to know where I kept all the report binders. I told him I don’t have reports and explained if I wanted to look something up from last year I sit down on my desk and find it using DSS. So we don’t have information overload, we don’t have binders of reports stacked up on bookshelves for reference. I recently showed my brother that he didn’t have to run reports anymore in the morning, that he just had to click on DSS and pivot to get all the same information. He really liked that.

Thank You.