Overview

For over 30 years our solutions have helped our customers foster passion and loyalty throughout the entire customer life cycle, from empowering every sales person with the latest and most important information about their customers, merchandise, and inventory, to ensuring that every delivery is executed on time, every time. Over 250 Big Ticket retailers rely upon the full suite of Escalate Retail solutions to help them deliver consistent experiences at every point of interaction with their customers.

Shopping for the home is always a very personal -- and often challenging - process. Shoppers often find it difficult to differentiate between different retailers or the merchandise they offer, and the quality of their shopping experience is often exclusively defined by the individual salespeople that they encounter. To survive in this inconsistent, sometimes intimidating, and often confusing environment, shoppers have come to demand that they be treated with respect, timely and accurate information, and consistency - no matter where or how they shop.

Experience has shown that the retailers who most consistently exceed these expectations will be rewarded with higher average sales, more repeat business, and invaluable goodwill.all critical stepping stones on the journey to sustainable loyalty.

Overview

For over 30 years our solutions have helped our customers foster passion and loyalty throughout the entire customer life cycle, from empowering every sales person with the latest and most important information about their customers, merchandise, and inventory, to ensuring that every delivery is executed on time, every time. Over 250 Big Ticket retailers rely upon the full suite of Escalate Retail solutions to help them deliver consistent experiences at every point of interaction with their customers.

Shopping for the home is always a very personal -- and often challenging - process. Shoppers often find it difficult to differentiate between different retailers or the merchandise they offer, and the quality of their shopping experience is often exclusively defined by the individual salespeople that they encounter. To survive in this inconsistent, sometimes intimidating, and often confusing environment, shoppers have come to demand that they be treated with respect, timely and accurate information, and consistency - no matter where or how they shop.

Experience has shown that the retailers who most consistently exceed these expectations will be rewarded with higher average sales, more repeat business, and invaluable goodwill.all critical stepping stones on the journey to sustainable loyalty.

E-Commerce

Developing and maintaining a multi-brand, multi-national and scalable ecommerce website with a complex set of products and assortments, then integrating that web site into e-marketing and contact center to create a comprehensive online presence represents a significant challenge for retailers today. Leading organizations are using Escalate Retail to make sense of this complex process, and to create and deliver a compelling and successful online channel for their customers.

Escalate Retail's Content and Catalog Management enables retailers to orchestrate both structured and unstructured media assets, create unlimited assortments, and deliver customized content. Our Commerce solution enables them to execute web orders, collect payments, manage online accounts and administer customer information.

Our Guided Selling application guides a user through an interactive product recommendation and selection process to make it easy for them to understand and compare features, get expert advice, find gifts for the right occasion, and select or configure products and services.

Our Contact Center capabilities deliver customer and account information on the phone or through any person-to-person interaction channel.

Rich analytics enable multi-channel analysis, a 360-degree view of the customer behavior via our Business Intelligence solution.

These product capabilities combine to deliver a compelling and lucrative online presence for retailers and consumer-facing organizations.

Clienteling

Retailers must maximize their revenue from each of their key customers. Escalate Retail's Clienteling guides sales associates through the selling process, matching key customers to merchandise and marketing programs increasing visits and sales per visit.

Sales associates can access real time information about their key clients including contact information, recent transactions, holds, service tickets and alterations, wish lists, loyalty points and thresholds, events, and relevant reports. Marketing group can coordinate programs and events with the sales associates to maximize sales opportunities with the right customers. Clienteling leverages customer insights to recommend products for up-sell or cross-sell opportunities, notify a customer about new merchandise arrival from their favorite brand, call a customer about early sales notification, remind sales associates of relevant events such as birthdays or anniversaries for each customer, and help a company maintain information about top customers as they transition between sales associates.

With Escalate Retail's Clienteling, sales associates can be more effective in bringing customers into the store by matching customer profiles to store events, new merchandise, sales, and cross-sells.

Key Features

• Assign clients to sales associates
• Follow-up actions
• Transfer clients among sales associates
• Measure associate effectiveness
• Suggested activities for sales associates
• Client profile management
• Transaction and preference views for customers
• Wish lists
• Holds, service tickets and alterations by client
• Event-triggered actions
• Privacy and security level access
• Browser-based access at POS, kiosk, or PC

Relationship Marketing

Escalate Retail Relationship Marketing enables marketers to engage in event-triggered, multi-step dialogs with customers, prospects and channel partners. These dialogs drive incremental revenue and improve customer loyalty. Automatically monitor key events defined by marketers and then take a series of actions and follow-ups to communicate with customers. Key events could include a customer purchase, a wedding, an address change or any similar event. Follow-up interactions include messages and offers sent via email or direct mail, and those accessed at point-of-sale or website.

Our Relationship Marketing solution works across multiple channels. For example, an in-store purchase can trigger an automated e-mail follow-up referencing the purchase. Relationship Marketing is optimized for email, direct mail, website, wireless, point-of-sale, and other in-store devices. Relationship Marketing enables marketers to enhance any existing marketing program or application to drive increased loyalty and sales. Relationship Marketing can inject richer, more personalized communications into existing loyalty programs, gift registries, e-commerce sites, point-of-sale messages and inventory lookups.

The real power of Escalate Retail Relationship Marketing is delivered when it automatically calculates the success of each dialog, including response rates, conversion rates, and ROI. Our customers use this information to make mid-campaign adjustments and to improve future interactions.

Key Features

• Multi-step customer dialogs
• Event-triggered dialogs
• Synchronized, cross-channel dialogs: email, direct mail, Web, call center, kiosk, wireless
• Dialog prioritization
• Highly scalable customer state management
• Audience targeting
• Integrated content management
• Template creation for e-mail and direct mail
• Address list management and filtering
• List de-duplication and suppression
• Opt-out management and automatic filtering for "opt-outs"
• Incorporation of code for point-of-sale tracking
• Control groups and flexible testing
• Automatic tracking of individual responses
• Real time event monitoring
• Packaged reports
• Seamless integration with Business Intelligence
• Seamless integration with other Escalate Retail applications

Java Point of Sale

Customer1, the Java-based sales management solution Escalate Retail optimizes POS transactions by leveraging information, inventory, and business logic from across the enterprise -- in real time -- to improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, and enhance profits.

Customer1 seamlessly connects customers, orders, and inventory to increase customer satisfaction and drive higher revenues. It collects, integrates, and delivers information simultaneously to and from every point of sale on any device across the retail enterprise to enable users to access all sales functions in real time from a single window, including:

• Sales Order Entry and Management
• SKU Details
• Inventory Availability and Reservations
• Customer History
• Special Orders
• Credit History, Open to Spend, and Electronic Credit Applications

Pricing and Promotions

Customer1 is developed and deployed on the industry-leading J2EE platform, ensuring that it is scalable, adaptable, extensible, easy to use, and affordable. The easy-to-use graphical presentation of Customer1, especially when implemented as part of a complete multichannel strategy, reinforces salesperson confidence and encourages a positive perception of the retailer. Configuration tools make it easy to customize the application to meet each retailer's specific needs.

Merchandising

Escalate Merchandising facilitates the constant flow of responsive assortments throughout the organization. Merchants can quickly and effectively determine the optimum stock positions for their entire assortment across all channels and locations, and focus on developing a merchandise mix that is driven by margins, revenue, brand image, and return on investment.

Escalate Merchandising provides the advantage of real-time inventory information to merchants as they make the critical merchandising decisions that drive the organization's performance. Detailed, up-to-the-second knowledge of every inventory transaction, including reservations, sales, returns, purchases, advance shipping notices, receipts, distributions, transfers, cycle counts, and repairs ensures that the best available information is used to determine which products are right for which stores at what price points.

Online analysis tools to provide decision makers a single source of accurate, timely information. It provides current and historical analytical data for all activities critical to retail success, including sales, on-hand inventory position, on-order, receipts, distributions, pricing, inventory adjustments, and returns to vendor. Combining Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) and Best Business Practices, Escalate Analytics deliver performance data to desktops across the enterprise in retail-friendly formats to reveal trends, expose opportunities, and execute strategic plans that drive ROI and provide competitive edge.

Inventory

Inventory provides real-time inventory information to decision makers throughout the organization to support and validate merchandising plans, maximize sales and GMROI, and minimize stock-outs and markdowns. Ultimately, precise inventory control enables retailers to realize the full potential of their inventory investments while providing a more satisfying shopping experience for their customers.

Detailed, up-to-the-second knowledge of every inventory transaction, including reservations, sales, returns, purchases, advance shipping notices, receipts, distributions, transfers, cycle counts, and repairs, ensures that all decision makers have the best information possible when deciding which products are right for which stores at what price points. One single source of inventory information in support of all selling channels guarantees that a single version of the truth is available to all decision makers and fulfillment centers. Escalate Inventory delivers real-time inventory information to merchants making the critical merchandising decisions that drive their organization's performance.

Comprehensive inventory monitoring and controls deliver complete visibility into every movement of every item throughout the entire inventory life cycle. Flexible cost management applications deliver tight margin controls and timely notification of cost fluctuations and margin-impacting incidents.

Sophisticated Inventory Analysis delivers sales-to-stock ratios, key item exception analysis, weeks-of-supply, and out-of-stock identification to enable merchants to intensify assortments at the appropriate locations, at the proper time. The ability to analyze customer response patterns and tailor promotions and price changes according to demand cycles makes it possible to protect margins and drive sales at every store.

Powerful replenishment capabilities trigger automatic responses to sales trends to ensure optimum stock positions, minimal stock outs, and continually satisfied customers and store managers. Replenishment analyzes historical information and automatically transforms the data to accurately predict future requirements, supporting one-step new product forecasting, seasonal purchasing, and "what-if" analysis for advanced scenario management. User-defined business rules and sophisticated algorithms facilitate stock levels that optimize cash flow, assortments, and selection. Flexible scheduling and workflow options deliver responsive processes to maintain a consistent flow of responsive inventory to all sales locations and channels.

Financials

Financials, integrated across the enterprise, are designed to maximize the revenues derived from every selling season. Accuracy and ease of use are built into these powerful, functional tools built to optimize performance and drive profitability.

Accounts Payable solutions ensure efficient, timely payment of invoices while automatically maximizing available discounts and terms. Powerful applications for invoice entry, matching, and General Ledger distribution react within retailer-defined variance tolerances to automatically post receipts, debit memos, credit memos, and cost adjustments to the master database to minimize payment processing time, facilitate vendor relationship management, and keep all critical accounts (sales, inventory, cash, etc.) accurate and up-to-the-minute.

Transactions may be received electronically to minimize staff in the Accounts Payable area.

General Ledger applications keep financial analysts out of the details and focused on issues that impact the bottom line. Comprehensive, flexible General Ledger management applications are complemented by robust Financial Reporting tools that allow each retailer to personalize the system to accommodate specific business requirements and make month and year ends straightforward and trouble-free. Analysts are empowered to make proactive business decisions that manage cash flow more effectively, and plan financing to minimize unnecessary cash on hand.

The credit management system in the Accounts Receivable module automates all operations of an in-house credit department. From financing options at the point of sale to fully integrated collections management, the module delivers everything required to serve customers and positively impact the company's finances. The Installment or Revolving Accounts Receivable module(s) provide the necessary tools to create an efficient and accurate online credit and collection service. The accounting staff can retrieve a complete portfolio for each customer and thereby have instant access to customer credit limits and payment history. Because salespeople never have to leave the floor to quickly complete the online credit applications, A/R dramatically decreases the time to complete the average sale. Contracts may be completed at the point of sale in a seamless workflow from sale to contract creation, allowing the retailer to:

• Maintain a paperless, real-time credit and collections environment
• Gain immediate access to customers' credit limits and payment history
• Generate monthly statements and customized late charge notices
• Use pre-determined parameters to calculate minimum payment amounts, finance charges, and insurance fees
• Lower credit retrieval fees by providing credit history to credit agencies

Complete Private Label Finance applications are integrated with all Financials to provide rapid electronic processing of private label Electronic Credit Application (ECA) and credit transactions from most major credit providers. It reduces the time and labor required for add-on authorizations, and end-of-day settlements. Rapid credit processing enhances both customer service and the shopping experience to stimulate increased sales and repeat business. Automatically capturing customer information while eliminating duplicate processes reduces manual labor and errors. The gains in efficiency delivered by Private Label Finance translate into improved productivity, decreased costs, and increased revenues.

Analytics

Analytics delivers a common analytical platform built upon industry-standard technologies to translate data into consistent, meaningful, and actionable information that helps retailers to fully leverage their data across the enterprise. Fast, accurate, consistent, and easy to use, Analytics replaces time-consuming, error-prone spreadsheets with easy-to-use business intelligence solutions. Analytics employs drill down, slice and dice, and interactive graphical analysis to turn vast amounts of enterprise data into manageable, actionable information. Combining Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) and Best Business Practices, Analytics establishes analytical parameters that make it easy for everyone in the organization to understand and use. GERS Analytics improves sales, margins, and profitability by regulating inventory and making merchandising decisions based on performance.

Escalate Analytics' real-time collaboration tools enable retailers to quickly and easily identify slow and fast movers, recognize opportunities, share single views of information, and ultimately make profitable business decisions. Analytics allows retailers to not only manage by exception, but also write their own rules to focus on issues that have the greatest potential to improve the bottom line. Scorecards report the results of sales, inventory, and vendor analysis to quickly uncover problem areas. Buyers and managers can fine-tune their merchandising and allocation plans on the fly to optimize inventory investments and selling opportunities.

Analytics is deployable over the Internet, allowing the entire organization to access critical business intelligence on a controlled, as-needed basis. Getting the right information to the right people at the right time enables them to seize opportunities for greater sales and profits that might otherwise be missed. Putting Analytics on the Web also ensures the consistency of information across the enterprise, and optimizes communication to foster quicker decisions.

The average time to implement Analytics, including a complete complement of business intelligence services, is 35 days. Once a retailer fully employs the analytical power, speed, and efficiency of this easy-to-use, broad, and deep solution to guide your business decisions, they will begin to realize:

• Increased revenues
• Reduced costs
• Higher margins
• Enhanced customer service

Supply Chain

Supply Chain solutions integrate warehousing and distribution, vendor management and analytics, and electronic document exchange to streamline the supply chain and increase speed, eliminate errors, and reduce costs. Enabling constant interaction and collaboration between all business partners improves communications to deliver a consistent stream of responsive, high-demand merchandise to selling locations.

Critical sourcing decisions are empowered by powerful analytics designed to arm decision makers with the information they need to drive value into the supply chain. Vendor Analysis delivers timely vendor scorecards that measure and rank manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors based upon shipping performance metrics, fulfillment rates, sales velocity, gross margins, markdowns, and perfect order performance to ensure effective sourcing decisions and successful negotiations.

Escalate Warehouse Management and Distribution solutions, guided by user-defined processing rules and flexible rules-driven applications, deliver complete inventory life cycle support across the organization to streamline operations and optimize flow-through. Escalate solutions increase labor efficiencies, eliminate unnecessary movement and handling, and shorten distribution cycles to exceed customer expectations by ensuring that the right merchandise reaches the right locations quickly and accurately. Comprehensive productivity tracking and analysis tools manage all warehouse operations, and sophisticated location mapping programs optimize all physical movements throughout each facility, including putaway, picking, and location replenishment. The Radio Frequency (RF) Warehousing capabilities fully integrated into all solutions to manage stores, warehouses, and distribution facilities to automatically update perpetual inventory, receiving history, and shipment history with every inventory movement. RF Warehousing enables retailers to:

• Capture every physical inventory movement in real time
• Optimize all physical movements of inventory, with flexible, intuitive, directed picking and putaway modules
• Personalize navigation and validation rules according to staff skill levels and experience
• Automatically assign user-defined priority to most tasks to ensure timely completion of mission-critical transactions
• Update perpetual inventory immediately
• Monitor inventory with automatic discrepancy alerts and priority replenishment instructions
• Automatically verify PO number, SKU, and location in real time

FurnishNet

Effective collaboration depends upon the timely, accurate, and seamless exchange of information between all trading partners. FurnishNet speeds the accurate transmission of purchase orders, purchase order acknowledgements, advance ship notices, invoices, and many other transaction types to trading partners throughout the supply chain. By integrating e-mail, web applications, electronic data interchange (EDI), and XML, into a unique "Any-to-Any" exchange, critical documents are translated into the appropriate format for the immediate electronic flow of information between business partners of any size, running on any platform. For more information, please visit www.FurnishNet.com.