Strombger Products

Stromberg Success Stories » PETCO Animal Supplies, Inc.

Industry: Retail
Employees: 3,000
Interface: Peoplesoft

To keep labor costs from becoming a pet peeve, PETCO turned to Stromberg for time and attendance management.

PETCO Animal Supplies, Inc. is a leading retailer of premium pet food, supplies, and services with a commitment to quality animal care and education. PETCO’s strategy is to offer its customers a complete assortment of pet-related products and services at competitive prices, with superior levels of customer service at convenient locations, by hiring pet lovers and training them to become counselors to their pet-loving customers.

Founded in 1965, PETCO’s grow-through-acquisition approach and new store development has paid off. Today, the company’s FY 05’ net sales are estimated at about $2 billion. Best known as a specialty retailer, PETCO operates approximately 800 neighborhood stores in 49 states, nine distribution centers, and has over 17,000 associates. PETCO also operates a leading destination for online pet food and supplies at www.PETCO.com. Fulfillment for e-commerce orders is handled at five distribution center locations.

Challenge: Replacing an outdated system at the distribution centers and enabling visibility into employee hours

Regarding its previous time and attendance management system, Andrew Ross, Manager of Business Systems, said, "Before Stromberg we had no centralized visibility into the associate activities taking place." To keep track of labor costs, the company was relying on an outdated, standalone PC-based solution.

PETCO wanted to standardize operations on a single system for all of its distribution centers and eliminate the time-consuming manual entry with the previous setup. The company was determined to explore a technology that would help it more efficiently achieve its goals.

PETCO spent several months researching time and attendance vendors, which included seeing demonstrations of the systems and talking to other companies in the retail industry. Ultimately, PETCO chose Stromberg Enterprise because of the product’s ease of use and the company’s commitment to customer service.

Solution: Stromberg Enterprise with Biometric Time Clocks

Before implementing Stromberg, there were some initial fears expressed by the associates about the biometric clocks, but Stromberg provided training materials that alleviated the worries. Now, in real time, supervisors can check to see which employees are clocked in and if they have any exceptions.

"Stromberg provides us with an enterprise solution that provides real-time visibility to labor usage at our distribution centers," stated Ross.

PETCO chose Stromberg Cyber Series Biometric time clocks, time and data collection terminals that set a new standard in the industry with proven, e-field sensor technology. This method of fingerprint recognition distinguishes a ridge from a valley by using sensors located on a one-inch-square pod. These clocks provide security and cost savings through the elimination of time theft and employees clocking in and out for each other.

Stromberg’s strong biometric security and payroll software integration features are important to PETCO. Stromberg Enterprise also gave PETCO the ability to control its most valuable and costly resource: employees. System benefits to PETCO included:

  • More accurate data
  • Less time spent entering and processing data
  • Strong reporting and scheduling functions
  • Reports that display key labor hours and wages by department, cost center, and job
  • Productivity analyses that made managers aware of critical labor information

Real-time visibility of employee activities

Positive results from the new Stromberg system are already being seen. "Distribution directors have noted that Stromberg has allowed them to better control their overtime, because they know who is getting close to their hours for the week on a real-time basis," said Ross. "At the first deployment, everyone was extremely excited to see the real-time visibility of associates. Managers at our second distribution center deployment were excited by all the reporting capabilities."

PETCO implemented a combination of ad hoc and scheduled feeds to its Peoplesoft software that reduced the effort accounting required to close down payroll processing. As Ross stated, "This has reduced the auditing necessary to ensure the accuracy of data, both on the time and attendance side and on the payroll side." It has also streamlined the biweekly, period-end tasks of payroll process, as far as the effort required for the interfaces.

In the future, PETCO is considering integrating its labor standards and correlating incentive data to eliminate some spreadsheets.

Leading solutions for retail businesses

Part of PETCO’s mission is to offer a complete assortment of pet-related products at competitive prices, with superior levels of customer service at convenient locations, including the Web. The company’s IT investment is critical to accomplishing every aspect of this goal. Of course, a dedicated and effective staff can significantly impact customer satisfaction.

Optimizing the staffing mix can mean the difference between a disgruntled customer and a satisfied one. Stromberg software helps deploy the ideal staff to ensure customer satisfaction.

Additionally, Stromberg software offers added features and functionality that can be an asset to any company, including automated complex pay rules, flex scheduling, and configurations that help your business comply with all labor laws.

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