Knauber

Knowing the company
When Anna and Michael Knauber opened a simple convenience store in Bonn in 1880, little did they imagine that they were founding a family business that, a century later, would expand into a €470 million operation. Today, Carl Knauber Holding GmbH & Co. KG comprises seven home improvement and craft outlets, 30 fuel stations as well as gas, mineral oil and contracting subsidiaries, and employs 1,000 people.

Counter to stereotype, seventy percent of Knauber's retail customers are women. Successfully pursuing this niche, Knauber has diversified beyond traditional hardware and garden supplies into cookware and supplies for hobbies, arts, crafts and pets.

Defining the strategy
This diverse portfolio, with strong seasonal swings in departments such as gardening, put pressure on Knauber to cost-effectively place the right staff at the right location and right time to reliably provide knowledgeable customer service.

This is no minor challenge in Germany, where the retail sector has high wages, high staff churn and skill shortages. The task was further complicated at Knauber, where planners relied on more than 7,000 manually scripted allocation schedules.

When Knauber noticed a productivity drop and a significant increase in its human resources costs, it sought an integrated solution to help combat the issue.

Choosing the solution
Knauber wanted to use its existing staff more productively, and gain the operational visibility and control to increase service, sales and profitability. The company needed the ability to both automatically measure work hours and absenteeism, and produce work schedules that supported actual customer flow. In particular, it wanted to focus overtime spend on when it most benefited the business rather than employees - but without alienating valuable, trained staff.

"We were walking a tightrope between bureaucracy and improved efficiency," said Hasan Cürük, head of organisation and IT at Knauber. "Our aim was to improve the quality of service and increase revenues, while creating a better overview of all processes for directors and employees, without introducing an attendance recording system."

After a competitive evaluation, Knauber installed Torex Workforce Management and Torex OSCAR POS point of service systems.

"The clear choice was Torex because of its ease-of-use and flexibility," said Cürük. All outlets are now equipped with Torex OSCAR POS touch-screen terminals. The central Torex OSCAR POS server communicates with an Oracle database and each branch store has its own server. All branches are connected via DSL to a Virtual Private Network to ensure the secure and independent operation of all workstations for maximum uptime.

The intuitive screens enable staff to provide a swift checkout service that customers appreciate.

The solution also immediately improved scheduling. Torex OSCAR-POS feeds sales and customer headcount information every 15 minutes into Torex Workforce Management, which automatically generates staffing charts. These help Knauber position staff to best support current customer needs and promotions, and more accurately anticipate future staffing needs.

With employee attendance automatically monitored at the POS, Torex also helps Knauber address productivity. However, because the system allows employee requirements to be taken into account during scheduling, it has been well-received by staff.

Achieving return on investment
Torex has given Knauber the customer activity intelligence it needs to efficiently create demand-driven staffing schedules that improve service quality without increasing staffing costs.

"Torex Workforce Management has enabled us to reduce employee overtime by 20 percent. Additional synergy comes from consolidating information at a group level and mapping it to further assist in demand profiling," reported Guido Lemmer, head of organisation, logistics and enterprise resource planning at Knauber.

This control has enabled Knauber to proactively plan and budget for promotions that attract more customers, but do so while containing productivity to optimise profit.