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Metro Cash & Carry cuts labour costs and boosts customer service with Workplace Systems

Metro Cash & Carry, a division of Metro Group, the word’s fourth largest retailer, has cut its labour costs by 3-7% and cut customer queues by 50% following a pilot to use workforce management software from Workplace Systems, a world leader in the development and supply of standards software products for workforce management. Metro Cash & Carry, with 77,000 employees, had largely been handling employee scheduling and forecasting tasks at the store level using paper-based schedules, Excel spreadsheets, and regional software solutions. Schedules were mostly based on historical sales figures. When sales were expected to spike, store managers would respond by increasing staff. Following the implementation of Workplace Systems' labour scheduling and forecasting software, labour savings of between 3% and 7% were achieved and some store managers benefited by spending up to 20 fewer hours per week, per department building forecasts and schedules. Berthold Steur, project manager at Metro Cash & Carry, added: "While the goal of the project was to increase the efficiency of the workforce and test a standard, harmonized solution for forecasting and scheduling applications, customers were the big winners. We realised a reduction of more than 50% in customer queues." Ian F Lenagan, Chairman and Chief Executive of Workplace Systems, said: "The key to this achievement was the ability to build schedules based not simply on sales, but on item, invoice, register, customer service, task management, and historical data, among others. Metro now expects that as the rollout moves forward, greater efficiencies will be realised by an interface to the company’s SAP HR and financial systems." Workplace Systems 01908 424042 www.workplace-systems.com