Checking Inventory Accuracy of a Third Party

A DIY store chain operating a total of 160 stores in nine European countries required the support of RGIS. Overall, the DIY store chain has sales areas of around 1.89 million square meters, which corresponds to an average store size of more than 11,800 square meters. The DIY store chain has decades of experience in operating DIY megastores with garden centres in major regional catchment areas.

The product range encompasses around 50,000 items on average, with up to 190,000 items available online. Products are structured in the following divisions: hardware, electrical, paint, wallpaper, flooring, construction materials, timber, prefabricated components, sanitary, tiles and garden.

REQUIREMENT

The DIY store chain needed an experienced inventory company to check the accuracy of outsourced store stocktakes, so required RGIS to provide the following:

  • Independent checks, to confirm inventory accuracy of another stocktaking company
  • Completed by an experienced inventory company rather than in-store staff
  • All high value items to be checked with an additional percentage of other items
  • Overnight checks to be made, so not to impact on customers or staff

SOLUTION

The DIY store chain partnered with RGIS to complete the inventory accuracy project, and provided the following:

  • Scheduled a team of 27 experienced RGIS auditors per store
  • A total of 14 stores were checked
  • Checked 10% of all items including first and last item counted and all high value items
  • Completed checks between 8pm and 3am

RESULTS

The DIY store chain found that by outsourcing the inventory accuracy project to RGIS to complete, the following was achieved:

  • Ensured the accuracy was high due to the checks made
  • Did not need to use in-store staff
  • Business was not impacted as the checks were completed overnight
  • Variances to the original stocktake were sent to both the customer and the third party