A chain of garden centres that have been growing and selling the very best quality plants required the support of RGIS. The chain of garden centres remains a family business to this day, with the fifth generation actively involved. The company has a network of 18 garden centres across the south of England, where friendly and knowledgeable staff can help get the best from people's home and garden, sharing their plant expertise.

REQUIREMENTS
The chain of garden centres needed a solution to count stock with a consistent process and level of service for all stores, regardless of the size or location in order to ensure that the information taken from each stock take was accurate.

The chain of garden centres required RGIS to provide the following:

• Count stock in all 18 garden centres, including items without a barcode
• Count stock in both internal and external areas
• Process to be mirrored at all garden centres
• Store staff to be able to check accuracy of the stock count
• Variance report to be provided within the reporting

SOLUTION
The chain of garden centres partnered with RGIS to complete the garden centre stock count accuracy project, and RGIS provided the following:

• RGIS agreed a set of procedures with the customer that would provide a step-by-step process counting guide
• To ensure all products were captured during the count, the store lead accompanied RGIS during the ticketing of the store
• RGIS arranged that certain key areas of the store were counted with a store colleague present, such as pot plants as they looked very similar
• Counted the outside storage areas that had little or no lighting during the daylight

RESULTS
The chain of garden centres found by outsourcing the garden centre stock count accuracy project to RGIS, the following results were achieved:

• The accuracy of the counts was far greater than what had previously been achieved by conducting counts internally
• Based on the variance to expected units counted, each centre was able to identify the cause of the discrepancies
• From the reports RGIS provided the company were able to implement actions that would reduce shrinkage