TSC Stores Success Story
08/08/2008
A universal wish
Every business wants to be closer to its customers. TSC Stores, a retail hardware chain with 33 mostly rural locations across Ontario, Canada, accomplishes this goal by hiring customers to serve other customers. The idea is that no one knows someone's needs better than a neighbour.
Customers seem to agree. The hardware chain was able to grow its store count by 30 per cent last year while at the same time replacing 15 per cent of its existing store network. In the coming years, the company plans to continue to grow store count in the 20 to 25 per cent range and is committed to replacing all of its existing traditional stores.
Several other factors contribute to the chain's growth. TSC invests heavily in training to give each of its nearly 550 employees extensive product expertise.
The company also uses its knowledge of customers at each location to carefully select an extensive inventory. TSC caters to people who enjoy the country lifestyle, stocking 17,000 items for farm and country home improvement, working the land, and outdoor hobbies.
"Customers often tell us," says Paul Singh, director of information technology at TSC, "that if they can't find it anywhere else, they can find it at TSC. What keeps them coming back is our product range and our product expertise."
The challenge at all 33 stores is to keep the right items on hand at an affordable price. And the critical link to ensure this is IT.
TSC has standardized its IT infrastructure on HP. "Every step in our supply chain, from receiving a product at our distribution center to managing it through a store's inventory to ringing it up at the point of sale is serviced by HP," says Singh. "The reason is reliability."
Improving the customer experience
"The objective of our IT solutions," explains Singh, "is to help employees focus totally on customer service. We take as much manual labour as possible out of steps such as inventory control, store scheduling, and decision support."
HP entered the picture in the early 1990's with printers. An HP Business Partner named Protek Systems began serving the account in 1995.
In 2001, TSC decided to network all locations. Influenced by a positive experience with Protek service and HP products, the company chose an HP infrastructure. As Singh recalls, "HP's reputation for reliability and security is something we'd experienced for ourselves." Now the company's network consists of 39 HP ProCurve 2524 switches and 57 HP servers, many of which are HP ProLiant ML350 G5 systems.
"Our HP servers are the most critical component of our HP solution," Singh says. "We need 24/7 operations in our stores. We have night crews receiving and restocking product and our warehouse is managing inventory at all hours. The servers have proven to scale easily and dependably handle a 25 to 30 per cent annual increase in throughput."
A universal wish
Every business wants to be closer to its customers. TSC Stores, a retail hardware chain with 33 mostly rural locations across Ontario, Canada, accomplishes this goal by hiring customers to serve other customers. The idea is that no one knows someone's needs better than a neighbour.
Customers seem to agree. The hardware chain was able to grow its store count by 30 per cent last year while at the same time replacing 15 per cent of its existing store network. In the coming years, the company plans to continue to grow store count in the 20 to 25 per cent range and is committed to replacing all of its existing traditional stores.
Several other factors contribute to the chain's growth. TSC invests heavily in training to give each of its nearly 550 employees extensive product expertise.
The company also uses its knowledge of customers at each location to carefully select an extensive inventory. TSC caters to people who enjoy the country lifestyle, stocking 17,000 items for farm and country home improvement, working the land, and outdoor hobbies.
"Customers often tell us," says Paul Singh, director of information technology at TSC, "that if they can't find it anywhere else, they can find it at TSC. What keeps them coming back is our product range and our product expertise."
The challenge at all 33 stores is to keep the right items on hand at an affordable price. And the critical link to ensure this is IT.
TSC has standardized its IT infrastructure on HP. "Every step in our supply chain, from receiving a product at our distribution center to managing it through a store's inventory to ringing it up at the point of sale is serviced by HP," says Singh. "The reason is reliability."
Improving the customer experience
"The objective of our IT solutions," explains Singh, "is to help employees focus totally on customer service. We take as much manual labour as possible out of steps such as inventory control, store scheduling, and decision support."
HP entered the picture in the early 1990's with printers. An HP Business Partner named Protek Systems began serving the account in 1995.
In 2001, TSC decided to network all locations. Influenced by a positive experience with Protek service and HP products, the company chose an HP infrastructure. As Singh recalls, "HP's reputation for reliability and security is something we'd experienced for ourselves." Now the company's network consists of 39 HP ProCurve 2524 switches and 57 HP servers, many of which are HP ProLiant ML350 G5 systems.
"Our HP servers are the most critical component of our HP solution," Singh says. "We need 24/7 operations in our stores. We have night crews receiving and restocking product and our warehouse is managing inventory at all hours. The servers have proven to scale easily and dependably handle a 25 to 30 per cent annual increase in throughput."