Customer Service

Home furnishing retailer drives efficiency, boosts customer experience

Photo by istock.com

January 12, 2021

RC Willey Home Furnishing is improving efficiency and boosting the customer experience after swapping a legacy EDI system with ecUtopia, TrueCommerce's cloud-based supply chain management platform.

The TrueCommerce platform has helped the retailer speed up order processing and expand into new sales channels as well, according to a press release.

RC Willey Home Furnishings, based in Salt Lake City and owned by Berkshire Hathaway, runs 13 stores and three distribution centers in Utah, Nevada, California and Idaho, and sells furniture, mattresses, consumer electronics, flooring as well as appliances. The retailer said the EDI technology helps make the supply chain complexity transparent.

"It's easy for us to handle any kind of merchandise because it runs through our system the same way," Stuart Peterson, vice president of supply chain, said in the release. "It's a SKU, it's a vendor and TrueCommerce-ecUtopia handles it all identically. Also, the transaction-based cost model really works for us."

With online shopping's growth since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, rapid fulfillment has become even more important for the retailer.

"In the COVID market, it's become a race for product," Peterson said. "The faster you get orders in, the faster you go to the head of the line. Speed in ordering is critically important in today's market. Without TrueCommerce-ecUtopia EDI, we'd have bottlenecks in our order entry process, and we'd send POs to vendors more slowly. Those seconds and minutes add up when you're talking about 10,000 orders."

According to Peterson, ongoing COVID-19 supply chain impacts have led to "backorders like I've never seen before." As a result, customer communications have taken center stage.

The platform's visibility into the supply chain makes it easier for RC Willey to keep customers appraised of delivery dates, order changes and other important information, according to the release.

"Automation and accuracy are really important to our order flow," Peterson said. "One of the key benefits of TrueCommerce-ecUtopia is more consistent and better order tracking, with fewer errors. The ability to see where product is and know when it will arrive at our DCs is critical to our customer experience."