Lund Food Holdings Rolls Out Pricing and Category Management System
EDINA, Minn. - Lund Food Holdings, Inc. completed its
implementation of TCI's pricing and category management solutions yesterday.
In just four months the company replaced its legacy headquarters pricing system with with TCI HQ, which provides centralized price management and hosting to the grocer's 20 Lunds and Byerly's stores.
The chain is also using TCI's Category Analyzer for item movement reporting and profitability analysis, which interface seamlessly with its new pricing foundation.
The biggest reasons for the change were the limited capabilities of the company's legacy system. "Our existing system didn't support changing industry standards, specifically those related to GTIN," Kevin Baartman, the company's v.p. of information systems, told Progressive Grocer.
"Secondly, it was becoming increasingly difficult to meet the needs of our business with our legacy system. Limitations within the system were requiring us to develop workarounds, especially as it related to automation, reporting, and ad-hoc query capabilities."
Another key requirement for the new system, according to Baartman, was a headquarters application which could interface with our existing store system. "We felt this was necessary in order to minimize the amount of change the organization had to absorb at one time," he said. "TCI's application interface made the process seamless."
Baartman faced few challenges in the implementation, for the most part. "The primary challenge with the implementation was cleaning up the Lunds item file," he said. "We wanted to make significant changes to the structure of the item file, and we used this implementation to achieve this. In addition, we worked extremely closely with our business partners to ensure all new items were defined and set up properly and all historical data was transferred correctly."
TCI's Category Analyzer has a range of standard reports, drill-down, and ad hoc query capabilities that allow the retailer's buyers and category managers to access critical movement and margin information without requiring assistance from its IT organization.
The company's category managers were fully trained in using the Category Analyzer in only two days. TCI handled all the TCI HQ training, which was primarily one-on-one with Lund pricing coordinators at the corporate office.
Moving forward, as Baartman begins implementing the TCI Store solution, he'll be using a "train the trainer" program. "We have identified a few pricing coordinators in our retail locations to be the first to implement the TCI Store solution, and they will subsequently be responsible for training the peers in the other locations," he said.
implementation of TCI's pricing and category management solutions yesterday.
In just four months the company replaced its legacy headquarters pricing system with with TCI HQ, which provides centralized price management and hosting to the grocer's 20 Lunds and Byerly's stores.
The chain is also using TCI's Category Analyzer for item movement reporting and profitability analysis, which interface seamlessly with its new pricing foundation.
The biggest reasons for the change were the limited capabilities of the company's legacy system. "Our existing system didn't support changing industry standards, specifically those related to GTIN," Kevin Baartman, the company's v.p. of information systems, told Progressive Grocer.
"Secondly, it was becoming increasingly difficult to meet the needs of our business with our legacy system. Limitations within the system were requiring us to develop workarounds, especially as it related to automation, reporting, and ad-hoc query capabilities."
Another key requirement for the new system, according to Baartman, was a headquarters application which could interface with our existing store system. "We felt this was necessary in order to minimize the amount of change the organization had to absorb at one time," he said. "TCI's application interface made the process seamless."
Baartman faced few challenges in the implementation, for the most part. "The primary challenge with the implementation was cleaning up the Lunds item file," he said. "We wanted to make significant changes to the structure of the item file, and we used this implementation to achieve this. In addition, we worked extremely closely with our business partners to ensure all new items were defined and set up properly and all historical data was transferred correctly."
TCI's Category Analyzer has a range of standard reports, drill-down, and ad hoc query capabilities that allow the retailer's buyers and category managers to access critical movement and margin information without requiring assistance from its IT organization.
The company's category managers were fully trained in using the Category Analyzer in only two days. TCI handled all the TCI HQ training, which was primarily one-on-one with Lund pricing coordinators at the corporate office.
Moving forward, as Baartman begins implementing the TCI Store solution, he'll be using a "train the trainer" program. "We have identified a few pricing coordinators in our retail locations to be the first to implement the TCI Store solution, and they will subsequently be responsible for training the peers in the other locations," he said.