Today’s retail managers are challenged to keep shelf availability and service levels high, while keeping store operations costs low without sacrificing the customer experience — which means they must schedule employees and manage tasks with an exacting degree of precision. JDA Sortware Group has announced new capabilities in its JDA Store Operations solution that help managers balance their sometimes conflicting priorities with a new level of accuracy, efficiency and flexibility, while increasing productivity and employee satisfaction.

“The enhancements to JDA Store Operations reflects our commitment to provide our customers with solutions that have the accuracy, efficiency and flexibility they need, while empowering them to be more responsive and make smarter and more informed decisions,” notes Glen Ceniza, global vice president, product management at JDA Software. “This retail intelligence enables them to increase productivity and profits. JDA Store Operations is the only solution available today that provides a unified view into store operations, from back office to workforce management, as well as more flexible access to the information store managers need to manage tasks, roles and specific employees in concert, making it much easier to balance service and availability objectives with real-world budgetary constraints. Shared dashboards and metrics create a seamless user experience that makes the complex job of store management much more straightforward.”

As the only software provider with comprehensive solutions that span multiple store competencies — from workforce scheduling and task management to back-office administration — JDA is in a unique position to streamline the job of the retail manager by seamlessly integrating these diverse functions. The new enhancements in JDA Store Operations provide users with a single customer view that brings together critical information across all elements, increasing productivity and empowering managers and employees to make decisions quicker and smarter. For example, store managers can easily match specific tasks to those employees who are qualified to perform them, while also observing internal workforce policies and local labor regulations.

One of the most exciting enhancements to JDA Store Operations is improved mobile access for busy managers who frequently leave the office. JDA’s mobility solution provides immediate insights into store-level and district-wide priorities, including common dashboards for accessing information that spans all the components of JDA Store Operations. For example, performance alerts triggered in the back office can result in the assignment of tasks within JDA Task, so front-line managers can make informed, fact-based decisions from any network or any device, speeding customer satisfaction and service levels.
These key enhancements in JDA Store Operations have been developed to increase information integration and access, addressing the everyday challenges of retail managers:

* Enhanced mobility, including improved metrics and dashboards. As store managers spend more time away from a desk and regional manager’s travel, new functionality in JDA Store Operations delivers the detailed information they need at their fingertips. Whether there is an issue with uncompleted tasks or low staffing levels, managers can access insights across all JDA Store Operations solutions from a single dashboard and make rapid decisions. District managers can have a broad view across multiple stores, enabling them to strategically assess which locations need their attention. Shared performance metrics make it easy to see which stores are meeting operations goals, as well as which locations are falling short. As long as managers have network access and a tablet, they can flexibly access capabilities of JDA Store Operations solutions, without the need to log in to multiple systems from their desktop.

* Integrated alerts across solutions, triggering automatic corrective actions. When a threshold alert is triggered in JDA Store Operations, that alert can generate a task assignment in JDA Task. Because JDA’s capabilities span many retail functions, integration and automation enable customers to respond faster as conditions change, while also enjoying a lower total cost of technology ownership. Managers only need to look in one place to view their most critical action items across many store functions and across every JDA Store Operations solution.

* Enhanced contract management in JDA Workforce Management. When individual employees have customised contracts, it makes the job of scheduling even more complex. Often, these contracts are dictated by local labor laws, overtime policies or other business requirements — making it critical to honor their terms. Now, individual contracts are considered as part of the automated scheduling process. Instead of generating a schedule, then checking it for contract violations, today managers can leverage auto scheduling as a one-step process, confident that specific contract conditions are being considered by JDA Workforce Management. Employees’ hours and pay can be tracked against their specific contracts on an ongoing basis.

* Improved controls and filtering in JDA Task. New capabilities in JDA Task help support clean and consistent task distribution, clear communication and follow-through. Personnel are defined based on their roles, which enables tighter control of task assignment. In addition, assigned tasks can be filtered by date, providing users with an immediate view of the most pressing job assignments. By giving managers greater visibility into task compliance, retailers can ensure that important events such as promotions are executed consistently and promptly.

“These new capabilities reinforce JDA’s commitment to deliver integrated capabilities across the entire JDA Store Operations solution,” noted Ceniza. “By leveraging synergies between our best-of-breed solutions, we have the ability to deliver more value than the sum of the individual parts. Whether our users are concerned with sharing data more easily, increasing their level of automation and efficiency, gaining a comprehensive view across functions or accessing JDA software from the field, these new enhancements anticipate their real-world needs and address the everyday challenges of managing store operations.”