Britain's Laura Ashley group is engaged in the design, manufacture, sourcing, distribution and sale of clothing, accessories and home furnishing.

Laura Ashley Japan (www.laura-ashley.co.jp) was looking for helping its store managers to more efficiently administer their staff and improve customer service which would hopefully result in lower labor costs while increasing sales opportunities.

WINWORKS One was selected by Laura Ashley Japan to perform precisely this assignment. Focusing on the workload of store managers as well as increase the time available to service customers and internal training.

Winworks`s Team Challenge:

Laura Ashley's sales sites have a customized personnel management structure that allows both full-time and part-time employees and temporary staff with different skill levels and experience to work together. This personnel structure fits within a monthly "time budget" for each store, which is the maximum number of scheduled work hours that the company has determined each store should meet.

Another challenge facing Laura Ashley Home stores is unique due to the company's specialization in home furnishings. Because of the large size of each store, management faces numerous constraints Including the large number of employees needed to staff the stores, and other specific requirements such as having on-site sales staff readily available who are able to provide interior design services to customers.

These factors make it very difficult and time consuming for store managers to prepare work schedules manually.

After using WINWORKS One solution, the staffs of one of the leading Laura Ashley Home stores were deemed to be 10 percent more efficient as a result of improved service time to customers and better management of the store.

Laura Ashley Japan says that the more time staff spends interacting with their customers, the more positive the impact on revenue, and therefore sought to increase the staff's time available to interact with customers.

An additional result of implementing the software was the store manager dramatically reduced the time spent on building the roster, from eight to two hours. This provided a time allowance to increase the customer interactions, and establish staff training sessions.

"We acknowledge the importance of designing efficient work schedules for our operations in order to provide superior working conditions to motivate our staff, as well as increase sales opportunities by minimizing unproductive time not used to serve customers," said Hideaki Takano, director of administrative headquarters for Laura Ashley Japan. "Increasing sales opportunities means increasing time spent servicing our customers.

As a result of introducing WINWORKS One at our Laura Ashley Home store at AEON Mall Chiba New Town, we saw a dramatic reduction in the time spent preparing work schedules and a groundbreaking increase in customer service time."

Due to the success of implementation, Laura Ashley is extending the usage of WINWORKS One solution to more than 20 major retail stores in the Kanto, Kansai, Tohoku, Shikoku and Kyushu areas to improve its sales.