Who is the Customer?
francesca’s is a women’s specialty boutique carrying a curated collection of extraordinary handpicked items at an affordable price. francesca’s opened their first boutique in 1999 in Houston, TX and has over 450 stores across 48 states, and a strong omnichannel presence.
What was the business problem?
francesca’s were losing in-store sales. As the space was quite small to house a unique and wide selection of items that francesca’s boutiques had to offer, they had to compromise on the in-store product depth. Therefore, they wanted to provide the option to order a wider range of sizes and colours, as well as different product options not available at the store, and to give the customer the extra flexibility of shipping the order directly to the customer's home or enable the collection of the order in-store.
What Oracle Retail Solutions have we implemented?
OLR implemented Order Broker (OROB) with Xstore to allow customers the option to buy products in-store and fulfil the order using warehouse inventory, through direct customer shipment or in-store pickup. The order flow was optimized to streamline transaction processing, reducing customer transaction time and creating a better user experience. In addition, Xstore was enhanced to allow Customer Service to perform order updates and to allow refunding to customers directly from Xstore.
What extra value did OLR add to the project?
OLR's extensive omnichannel experience delivered the solution on time and on budget. OLR used its in-house expertise and regression testing tools throughout the project lifecycle (solutioning, design, development, & integration) to ensure a successful outcome.
What was the outcome?
francesca’s realised a large increase in customer store orders, which led to significant revenue growth. One view of the inventory and the ability to facilitate the delivery with Order Broker between the stores has helped the store staff to be more helpful in fulfilling customer requests. Thus, helping them to know their customers' needs and tastes better, in order to propose other items, they may like and increase the order value as well as customer satisfaction. In addition to the store experience, an enhancement to Xstore allowed Customer Service to assist customers quicker, leading to better customer journeys.
Next steps & future
Customer in-store order was the first step in the transformation process. francesca’s is planning to implement additional omnichannel journeys such as Buy Online and Pickup In-Store. The additional journeys require the interactions of numerous enterprise applications, and therefore OLR will be supporting francesca's with their omnichannel experience to help achieve maximum ROI.
As part of the support services, OLR continues to support Order Broker Cloud Upgrades to ensure the solution is current.
(Updated on 24/05/2023)