For more than 50 years, Sterling Home has supplied quality furniture, homeware, and flooring to the people of Scotland and beyond, and today the nine-store business employs more than 350 people.
With a focus on delivering an exceptional and memorable customer experience, while simultaneously continuing to grow the business, it was clear the retail business needed an expert front and back office system to improve processes and ensure data was held in one place.
Searching for a solution
It turned to Swan Retail to find a solution and, after an initial discovery session, a simple approach was created to help the business fully understand exactly how the transition to the Swan Retail System (SRS) would take place.
“The consultancy team understood our business, understood what we’re trying to do, and they had a package that delivered a solution that supports multiple departments in one platform,” says Matt Bonar, IT Director at Sterling Furniture Group.
“SRS addressed the pain points that we had through an initial discovery session – they brought some good, solid consultancy with the teams, understood the processes we had, and implemented changes across our business with the help of the internal IT team – and now we use SRS throughout our whole business.”
Creating an impact across the business
Implementing the multi-departmental system across the business has enabled new, streamlined processes to be standardised, as well as having a centralised source of data which pulls in insights from in-store and online to build a deeper understanding of each customer – something which is essential to Sterling’s longer-term ambitions.
“We want to grow the business through better use of data, data management and intelligence,” says Matt.
“We’re also implementing a new data warehouse that will offer us the ability to report across all of our brands at quite a granular level in relation to the customer experience and all the interactions they have with us.”
Working from a tech perspective
From an IT perspective, the variety of APIs that can connect platforms to Swan was incredibly appealing to Sterling, and a Shopify integration has given the business more e-commerce capability.
“We have the ability, with Swan, to implement a variety of APIs that we can plug into other systems and make better decisions as a result of it, and optimise some of these processes which, over the years, have been quite disjointed,” says Matt.
The additional benefits of Swan
In addition to the obvious benefits a purpose-built retail management system delivers, SRS has also brought some potentially unexpected benefits to Sterling, too.
Thanks to processes being simplified and standardised, onboarding new staff is now quicker and easier, while the day to day way of working has also become easier.
While the implementation of SRS was a pain-free process, with Swan’s team working with Sterling’s internal IT team, the relationship is very much ongoing.
“We have built a good relationship – we have weekly meetings with them on developments, any issues that we’ve got and enhancements that we’ve got in play – we’ve found them really cooperative and eager to listen to our needs,” says Matt.
Helping SRS do more with less
Ultimately, however, the proof lies in the business impact the solution is having – and the team at Sterling is delighted with the impact Swan is having, with Matt sharing that SRS is enabling the team to do ‘more with less’.
“Swan offers a unique application that covers all aspects of our business,” he says.
“You’ll not find another system out there that allows us to manage our store that Swan does.”
