Rockler Woodworking Streamlines Communication with Reflexis
Rockler Woodworking opened its first location in 1954, and now operates more than 30 stores across the United States. While considered a smaller company, it faces many of the same challenges as large retailers.
Zebra Success Story: Rockler Woodworking and Hardware
Overview: Retail Challenge
Rockler is a small chain with big-box chain challenges around task management. This mainly stemmed from an overreliance on emails and PDFs for task delegation and assignment. The company began seeking a new, more advanced solution to help with task management.
Benefits / Outcomes
- Streamlined corporate-to-store communication across the organization
- Improved store execution and visibility into task completion rates
- Created more effective reporting for regional managers
Customer
Rockler Woodworking and Hardware
Medina, Minnesota/USA
Industry
Retail
Solutions
About Rockler Woodworking and Hardware
The history of Rockler Woodworking and Hardware began in 1954, when Norton Rockler started the Minnesota Woodworkers Supply Company in Minneapolis. Originally a mail-order business, the company had a big aspiration – to become the go-to resource for all things related to woodworking projects. Rockler now operates over 30 stores across the United States.
The Challenge
As the company grew, it realized it needed to improve its corporate-to-store communication and go-to-market strategy execution. The company had relied heavily on email and PDF documents to communicate tasks and projects such as promotions, product launches, seasonal campaigns and more to stores.
This resulted in several challenges:
- Store managers spent too much time in the office sifting through emails, trying to determine what exactly corporate wanted done.
- Corporate and regional management lacked visibility into which store teams had read or completed tasks, and when.
- The company lacked a two-way feedback mechanism to identify opportunities for operational improvement.
“We had the same challenges as big box retailers,” says Lori Larsen, Director of Retail Operations for the company. “Using email to communicate to our stores was very tedious. A one-week packet of information was a page PDF at times. Each packet would have action item after action item buried on page 5, 6, 7, 8 and so on. Our teams had to ‘hunt and peck’ for information, which is nothing but wasted time.”
The Solution
A Rockler executive who had seen the benefits of Reflexis Real-Time Task Manager™ at his previous company recommended Rockler look into the store execution solution.
Rockler implemented the cloud-based task management, store auditing and mobility solution, going from project kickoff to rollout in all stores in just three weeks. “Implementing Reflexis was probably one of the fastest and easiest implementations I’ve ever gone through,” Larsen says. “The support team from Reflexis was amazing.”
The Zebra Difference: Outcome and Benefits
Larsen explains the immediate positive impacts Rockler saw postimplementation:
Streamlined corporate-to-store communication: “Reflexis makes it easier for stores. They no longer have to look through 18 emails to find that one item. The search function is also a huge help for corporate and stores.”
Improved planning and execution: “The solution gives us total control over how communications go out and are assigned. Being able to select where the communication is going and being more concise really helped us out. The number of emails sent for clarification sake has diminished.”
Task completion visibility: “We now have total visibility as to when people are executing. That’s something we never had prior to Reflexis. We now have accountability.”
Continuous improvement: “We can also tell when we didn’t give stores enough time to complete a task. We learn from that and adjust. Reflexis helps us support our stores in their role. Stores execute better to achieve their sales and customer experience goals.”
Better reporting for regional managers: “Regional managers can now tell how fast and engaged stores are in task execution. It also gives regional managers visibility into opportunities to help with performance.”
“Implementing Reflexis has taken our customer experience to the next level,” Larsen concludes. “Consistency in execution of tasks leads to consistency in behavior on the floor. Store managers get out of the office and onto the sales floor where they can help, guide and mentor.”
