One Stop has over 950 neighbourhood stores across the UK and employs more than 10,600 people. Since 2003, One Stop has been a subsidiary of Tesco.
The Background
One Stop has over 950 neighbourhood stores across the UK and employs more than 10,600 people. One Stop is a heavily community-focused, convenience retailer providing a range of food, chilled products, and household goods to families across the UK.
They also provide helpful services like cash withdrawals, in-store Post Offices, utility top-up stations, and more. One Stop has been a subsidiary of Tesco since 2003.
Why One Stop needed our help
Firstly, a significant amount of in-store employee time was tied up checking direct-to-store supplier deliveries of fresh and chilled foods for accuracy. These stock counts were one of the most disliked parts of the job and upwards of 50% of stock counts went unfinished, and those that were completed were often done inefficiently and inaccurately.
The average time spent on checking and organising a chilled delivery from the point of arrival was one hour, which could occupy several staff at any one time. Each year, One Stop stores recorded about 218,000 chilled deliveries that needed to be checked.
Since these processes were so time consuming, stock took longer to be shelved and available for customers, which is critical for One Stop as it is all about convenience. Plus, mistakes in counting led to inaccurate stock data and missing items, all of which resulted in lost revenue for the business.
The benefits of direct-to-store delivery checking for One Stop
With our new processes, 3% of chilled food deliveries to various One Stop stores are checked by specialist Orridge auditors, and 0% are checked in-store by One Stop staff. The average time to organise and shelve a chilled delivery from the time of arrival has been reduced by more than half, now taking just 25 minutes to complete.
The implementation of our staff into One Stop processes has helped the retailer save a significant amount of money and time which has then been reinvested into the business. This has helped them improve their product offering and choice, boosted stock availability, and better their customer service, all resulting in more customers walking through their doors. It has even helped One Stop improve their relationship with their suppliers, as delivering to One Stop stores is more efficient for their drivers.
Liam Wagstaff, Service Operations Manager at One Stop, had this to say about our partnership:
“Manual delivery checks were one of the most time-consuming and unenjoyable processes we’ve ever had to do, and Orridge have completely revolutionised the way we approach it. They’ve provided us with a bespoke service that was quick and easy to set up, it has helped improve supplier relationships, and saved us on operational costs.
The Orridge team mobilise their auditors in a flexible and efficient way to ensure our target delivery sample is met. They worked alongside us and our suppliers to design and implement a robust auditing functionality within project timeframes and have been able to evolve as our requirements have changed.
The audit data they provide us offers a comprehensive and insightful view of delivery accuracy. This allows us to focus our energy on solving the root cause of issues, working together with our suppliers to achieve this. Our store colleagues can now focus on serving customers and our suppliers can address and enhance delivery accuracy.
Orridge truly feel like an extension of our own team, and I would recommend them to anyone in a heartbeat”.
How Orridge helped One Stop
Orridge Supply Chain Services has worked with One Stop for three years, providing delivery accuracy services across the company’s entire non-franchise estate of stores in England and Wales. When we started our work with One Stop, we introduced the concept of direct delivery auditing to them to help eradicate the time-consuming task of delivery checking.
Small, independent audits of supplier deliveries were undertaken by Orridge staff, providing One Stop with assurances on their suppliers’ ongoing delivery accuracy and performance. This saved checking every delivery individually and allowed the One Stop shop staff to focus on providing excellent customer service and the availability of in-store goods.
As the precise time for each delivery is unknown, our teams were given a window of time when they need to be present at the store. When deployed at each store while waiting for the delivery, our teams performed added value tasks for One Stop, such as date and temperature checking.
Our teams were deployed at several different One Stop locations at several different times to ensure a varied data collection process. This provided a mixed and true representation of deliveries coming into One Stop stores.
When each delivery arrived at the store, the Orridge team at that location collected delivery information from One Stop electronically and uploaded it onto the Orridge “Genius” platform. The flexibility of Genius enabled us to develop a specific programme for One Stop, accommodating the delivery checks and providing them with the data they required to manage the end-to-end delivery auditing process.
After delivery details are captured from the supplier, the deliveries are physically audited, and a comparison report is generated. Any short or over deliveries are validated by the store and signed for when agreed. This data is used by One Stop for further analysis and action. Our auditors work extremely hard to ensure that the delivery driver isn’t held up any longer than is necessary, and because we only audit deliveries as a representative sample of stores, most drivers on any given day can simply drop and go.
