Best Buy Gets Instant Store Map Information with ASG-WebDocumentz?

Industry: Retail
Location: International

Best Buy is the largest volume specialty retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software, and appliances. The company's subsidiaries reach consumers through nearly 1,900 retail stores in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, it now operates over 450 retail stores in 41 states under the Best Buy brand and will have more than 550 stores nationwide by 2004.

The Challenge
Best Buy maintains store maps for each Best Buy retail location. Store maps provide detailed information used for merchandising and for construction purposes such as remodels and expansions. To integrate recent acquisitions, the Best Buy integration team needed updated store maps. Previously, updating store maps had been a manual process. General contractors at each store had to redline the maps. Once the maps were marked-up, map designers at Best Buy headquarters would then incorporate the changes.

Best Buy faced significant costs to effectively integrate new locations. Estimates for map designers’ workloads were high. The update process was labor-intensive. Map designers needed to sort through paper-based copies, manually incorporate the changes, and then associate the edited map with its original map. Further, Best Buy faced significant shipping costs to distribute the updates to the general contractors and other staff at each store location.

Best Buy also faced difficulties effectively handling store resets. Resets occur when it is necessary to re-merchandise, remodel, or expand a store location. Store resets require coordination of information that is produced in a number of file formats, and gathered from many locations. The files can include project status reports, Polaroid photographs, blueprints, schedules, change orders, and other data. Timely access to this information is critical to the completion of a project, and for later merchandising and maintenance efforts.

To avoid project delays and unnecessary miscommunications, Best Buy needed to have a central access point to this information. Electronic delivery seemed as though it might be a means of saving thousands of dollars in overnight shipping costs, and get critical information delivered promptly.

The Solution
By using electronic scanning, Best Buy created an electronic duplicate of the original files. With ASG-WebDocumentz? as the storage and document retrieval solution, store maps are posted to the Best Buy Web site for online redlining by general contractors at stores around the country. To simplify document retrieval, maps are kept in virtual store folders and indexed on a per store basis.

Leveraging the power of WebDocumentz™ flexible directory structure and revision control capabilities, both the original and marked-up maps are organized by store with detailed revision histories. Using electronic revisions helps standardize the editing process. This ensures that all changes are perfectly legible and consistent for all stores. ASG-WebDocumentz is now used as Best Buy's central access point for upload and retrieval of all project documentation. Contractors have easy access, and the project superintendent remotely sends digital photos from the each store being reset. All 450+ Best Buy stores are reset six times per year, each reset lasting six weeks. Each project generates approximately 500 documents per day. These are conveniently scanned or uploaded, and are indexed by store from each job site.

"Now I can get job site documentation instantaneously for any of my facilities across the country," said Rich Schumacher, Special Projects Manager for Best Buy Co., Inc. "This service paid for itself in one project."

WebDocumentz provides Best Buy with a complete document solution instantaneously. Onsite field reports are sent to the corporate Web site, a function that is vital to the operation of Best Buy's complex organization. Using drag-and-drop functionality and the ASG-WebDocumentz™ user-friendly interface, site superintendents upload batches of photos and other documents to the Web site through a simple process. The electronic storage and easy retrieval of documents and photos by any location – at any time – is a convenience unparalleled by any paper storage method.

Measurable Results
For this project alone, electronic delivery yielded Best Buy with a savings of over $10,000 for the shipment of maps and planograms (detailed store layout drawings). In soft costs, hundreds of hours were saved by map designers who electronically incorporated the changes. Timely communications between the store locations and Best Buys headquarters has improved significantly, eliminating many project delays and errors. Best Buy has enjoyed tremendous savings in time, travel, and shipping costs associated with map updating and store reset projects. Best Buy clearly recognizes the significant benefits it has derived from ASG-WebDocumentz. It now plans an expansion of its electronic document management implementation to include over 2000 store maps, 100,000 pages of blueprints, 10,000 planograms, 200,000 leasing documents, and more than 500,000 photographs.

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