+ CASE STUDY
Goodwill San Antonio

Solutions DGR Delivers New Capabilities to Goodwill San Antonio

Overview

​​A spontaneous encounter at a conference grows into a fruitful collaboration between Goodwill San Antonio and Solutions ITW.

By implementing a new POS system that was specifically geared towards retail, the partnership maximized overall efficiency and delivered new capabilities to all Goodwill San Antonio locations.

Project

Goodwill San Antonio was looking to stay ahead of the curve and support the ongoing innovation of their systems when an unexpected encounter took place during a professional conference. A spontaneous conversation about serialized barcoding soon grew into a partnership with Solutions ITW. The objective was to significantly increase overall efficiency in all Goodwill San Antonio locations by upgrading their point-of-sale system.

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Challenges

A master list of key pain points was developed by the IT Steering Committee, including the needs and issues reported by the internal teams, as well as the solutions that were expected from their new POS system.

The main objective was to find and adopt a new POS system specifically geared toward retail, incorporating all the ins and outs of the industry. At the time, Goodwill San Antonio was facing the mandated upgrade of their POS system to accommodate EMV chip cards and EMV compliance. Hence, the new system would also need to support this move.

Additionally, Goodwill San Antonio was looking to gain more reporting capabilities in regards to color, discounts, and other metrics. The need to generate more data was especially critical for the in-house database engineering team at Goodwill San Antonio.

A quick demo of the Solutions DGR ecosystem displayed a sufficient production setup, straightforward and easy-to-use processes that would undoubtedly improve efficiency from an overall execution standpoint.

Due to some unexpected challenges encountered with a third-party credit card integration, the implementation process was broken down and completed in two phases.

Implementation

Implementation Phase One:

While the teams at Goodwill San Antonio and Solutions ITW waited for the credit card integration to be finalized, the first phase was initiated with the Solutions ITW team arriving on-site and kick-starting the process by setting up the main server, reporting servers, and getting the first stores ready for the big move.

Implementation Phase Two:

As the credit card integration process came to an end, Solutions ITW returned to complete the POS system installation in the remaining San Antonio locations. In spite of ongoing strategic changes and external challenges, the Solutions DGR system was finally in place and fully operational, bringing the implementation phase to a successful end. Goodwill San Antonio is now able to enjoy the advantages of their new POS system.

Due to some unexpected challenges encountered with a third-party credit card integration, the implementation process was broken down and completed in two phases.

Results

Implementing Solutions DGR has improved efficiency and visibility from the production process all the way down to the sale. Now that Goodwill San Antonio is operating on a system designed for retail—and particularly donated-goods retail—rather than trying to make a system designed for a similar industry work for them, operations flow more seamlessly, and they no longer find themselves with limited support. The system itself gives them the functionality, visibility, and analytics that they were looking for.

Additionally, Goodwill San Antonio had previously been limited in their ability to manage their loyalty and donor-management systems, and Solutions DGR has a more robust, holistic donor-management system built in.

Finally, the overall production process has been improved by moving to Solutions DGR. Goodwill San Antonio had an adequate system prior to the switch that got the job done, but they enjoy the more straightforward, easy-to-use system that Solutions DGR offers. They find they have gained efficiency and lost friction by implementing a system that was designed to do what they do.

With their new POS system, Goodwill San Antonio now has more reporting capabilities. For example, with centralized production, they are able to compare and contrast how much product is being provisioned to a store versus them internally producing it. Because they can now track, analyze, and compare new metrics, they are able to make better strategic decisions.

In the near future, Goodwill San Antonio plans to continue making use of all features and functions of Solutions DGR, letting the system do its work and continuously improve results across the board. Goodwill San Antonio highly appreciates the flexibility and the forward-thinking mindset of Solutions ITW in respect to addressing some of the upcoming innovations on which they’ve already started contemplating.

Particular pain points solved include:

  • The native ability to manage discounts, Color of the Day, adding items, and other basics of Goodwill operations, as opposed to finding workarounds to accomplish these things
  • The ability to stay on top of the mandated shift to EMV chip technology.
  • Solutions DGR is SQL-based, so Goodwill San Antonio can continue to access their in-house databases.
  • Solutions DGR supports an on-premise installation, and didn’t force a move to the cloud or any sort of hybrid solution.

I believe this will be the last POS [we’ll] need to buy. I think it’s something that’ll last us quite a while. And as for the race towards innovation, they’re moving forward with their innovative thinking and looking to solve problems before they could become huge.

+ Eric Muenchow, Vice President of IT, Goodwill San Antonio

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