SINSA enhances in-store customer experience with digital transformation of Retail Systems

Brief

SkillNet partners with SINSA in the digital transformation of core retail systems (including POS, Merchandising & Store Inventory) to improve customer satisfaction and increase efficiencies in operations.

About the client

Founded in 1990, SINSA is the largest home improvement retailer in Nicaragua. It has four business units, with retail comprising 75% of the company’s sales, followed by project and engineering services, wholesale and car battery distribution.

SINSA operates 24 stores and wholesale outlets offering 65,000+ SKUs in 15 categories of home improvement products (hardware, tiles, electric components among others) and services for the remodeling, construction, decoration and electrical industries.

Challenges

SINSA is one of the fastest-growing home improvement retailers in Central America. Its mission is to offer an integrated solution to all customers in construction, renovation, and decoration projects. Within its stores, customers could negotiate prices, and associates can offer discounts within certain ranges. Additionally, customers could pick up their purchases from a store or distribution center, create quotations and process them at a later date.

Apart from constantly looking at improving operations, the SINSA team wanted to ensure their retail platforms could support the company growth. They also wanted to be more agile and better support customer needs with process digitization. Given the focus on enhancing customer experience, they also felt that it was important for store associates to have access to updated inventory information.

Since SINSA’s homegrown retail system could not keep pace with the company’s growth or requirements, the team felt the need for an integrated retail system (including POS, Merchandising & Store Inventory) that met international standards while supporting their requirements.

Solutions

After selecting Oracle products for the digital transformation, SkillNet was chosen for the implementation of Oracle Xstore POS, Oracle Retail Customer Engagement, Oracle Retail Merchandising Systems and Oracle Fusion Financials. SkillNet’s in-depth knowledge of the retail industry, expertise in Oracle Retail, along with its LATAM capability and presence made it an obvious choice to support SINSA’s ambitious digital initiative.

SkillNet ’s consulting expertise helped define and design new processes across the organization. One of the key areas of transformation was in the redesign of pre-sale and post-sale processes for customer engagements. Other processes such as Equipment Rentals, Quotations, Distribution Center Pick Up and Returns, selling of defectives items at discounts and loyalty programs (Gift Cards and Gift Registry) were also part of the digital transformation.

Oracle Retail Xstore POS was introduced successfully across SINSA’s retail stores including the largest locations with over 50 registers per store.

Results

SkillNet has been instrumental in helping SINSA achieve its digital transformation goals with increased efficiencies in operations and improved customer satisfaction.

With the new systems, store associates can access inventory systems on their computers or from their mobile phones. The retail focused CRM, Oracle Retail Customer Engagement, provides store associates with a detailed view of customer transactions in real time.

Due to greater level of details at item levels, the efficiency of replenishment in warehousing has increased. This ensures increased availability of popular items.

The new systems also allow customers to add items to their basket from different parts of the store and pay at the exit. The new POS system has enabled SINSA to improve processing time resulting in 33 percent reduction in customer wait time. All of this has contributed to richer in-store experiences resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

We are delivering on our vision to become more agile and satisfy our customer’s needs through a digital transformation process that starts by analyzing our processes, making adjustments and adopting a modern platform that can help us reduce risks and bring scalability to our business units as we continue to grow.