How we prepare stores for the new year

Our new year begins on August 20, and then we gradually prepare for invasions of crowds of customers in December. December brings us revenue like four July.

We already know that if something falls in IT, it will be an ass. Last year, here's all the box office in the country fell by almost a day on December 20, and it was day P. But we were partially ready for all-around and left with minimal losses. In addition to such days, there are still regular breakdowns, infrastructure overloads and a lot of fun.
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Therefore, we do this in IT:

1. Set feature freeze mode. Any next release in February. Hotfixes - only if it is a major bug, and, preferably, several at once.
2. More cash registers for each instance. We need both physical places for new cash registers and the terminals themselves in case of replacement. And in every store there must be at least one non-volatile.
3. Somewhere in October, we collect all the broken system blocks from retail (they usually put them in their warehouses in the back rooms and take a hot-change from there) and collect two working ones from three broken ones. They are needed for temporary stores and for replacement. Purchased new consumables, in particular, mice and Claudia.

And still need to recruit a bunch of people. Go through the calculations, increase the work schedules and make a lot of things. And over the past year, we realized that much can be done a little better than before. I'll tell you now.

Store schedules

In December, we do two important things:

1. We increase the work schedules of stores so that they start in the morning and work late. For example, a shop on Kurskaya in the metro building is open from 8 am until midnight.
2. As of December 31, we leave at least one “last chance” shop, which is open until 9:00 pm (last year we closed it at 9:30 pm because of the crowd of those who did not have time to buy a gift). This is usually Taganskaya (easy to reach by car, 200 meters from the metro, a large room).

You need a lot of new people , on seasonal stores and in existing ones. Previously, we announced vacancies around November, but closed the lack of personnel by calling for all those who had ever been a seller in our stores to work. As a rule, these are people who went on promotion and changed jobs. They are well aware that an experienced seller for December can take the usual 3 salaries, took leave at his own expense at the main job and came to help us.

This year we started recruiting salesmen in the personnel reserve already in September, and did not invite old employees. Because this year we have greatly increased internal training, and the preparation of last year is already insufficient. And a week to retrain is very difficult. Plus for the year comes a bunch of new games, but you need to know everything. Therefore, we begin in advance.

Changes the density of shifts . Sellers are happy to work more, because it is good money.

Here is a graph of the distribution of the number of people in the store. The capacity of the hall is 5 employees, there may be 12, 9, 6 hours shifts (hence fractional numbers on the chart, for example, 2.5 people on the first day):



The schedule is a flexible document. In mid-November, he should be ready to make changes and approve everything by December. And always leave room for maneuver. If any events appear, for example, in shopping centers, the load increases. Therefore, the store administrators have the opportunity to call additional people to shift in the evening right during the day.

The schedule is based on the trends of historical sales data, the distribution of sales between the days of the week. Weather and weekend packs have almost no effect. In past years, under the crisis, the schedule for issuing wages in Moscow was important (someone received on December 1, someone on December 3, someone on December 10), now it has almost smoothed out.

In the second half of December, we cancel regular retail meetings. The last meeting takes place on December 12th. No further travel to the office. At the same time, internally training ends. We also disable mystery shoppers: from December 15, sellers can creatively mow due to lack of time, without fear that the store will be lowered for this rating (rating affects the premium). But the elders make sure that they do not abuse it.


^{Place under the Christmas tree on the floor is not always}

The shops

First, you need to reactivate all the old terminals . If they do not work for a certain period of time (30 days without checks from Sberbank), then they go into a lock. Unlocking the call, Sber sends the engineer. By the way, once this engineer, instead of leaving us the documents after the visit, left the master flash drive. Serpent Tempter!

Secondly, everything is repaired .

Thirdly, add the racks themselves with cash registers . And then an incredibly cool topic with electronic cash registers opened. All the years before that, we could not vary the number of terminals, and on December 28, the ticket office became a bottleneck. Look again at the store loading schedule above: for 3-4 days you need more terminals. So, you can take the cashier and register it in 15 minutes. Previously, it was 7 circles of bureaucratic hell, registration for 1-2 days, more expensive and hemorrhoids. Now you can even transfer the terminal between the shops: remove the registration on the site at the same address, then register on the other. Matter of ten minutes. Magic.

Then you need to redo the checkout area . We sometimes have islands with goods there, they need to be removed in order to clear the bridgehead. There will be queues. Then you need to lay out the packaging somewhere nearby, this is a very popular service. We put a special packing table in the corner, we train all employees to pack. Sasha, who once came to the company 10 years ago as a packer (and then became the head of a direction), held a special master class on how to do it not only beautifully, but also quickly. There were other experts on life hacking. This year we recorded it on video and sent it all over the net.

Then the packaging cache is made . This is when the best-selling goods are taken and packed in advance, with bows and ribbons. And placed directly on the shelves for unpacked goods. So that you can immediately grab and not wait.

In parallel, the delivery schedule is changing . There was a delivery, for example, once a week, we do 2-3 times a week. It is necessary because not all stores have sufficient storage or storage. Goods faster and more unevenly consumed. Many pre-orders.

We decorate shops without fanaticism. On the site we change the pictures of shops for decorated ones. Honestly, I do not know why, but we feel that this is correct. Then do not forget to throw out the tree, that is, change to normal.


<sup>The shop on Komsomolskaya stalled perfectly and made toys on the Christmas tree


JC_IIB advised how to catch the Chinese on Tverskaya, we put it in the window</sup>

Ticket offices are classified by size into large, medium and small. For each - its own planogram calculations.


At the cash desks are often small items, for example, the sets "Grow a tree." We have fir, cedar, fir, sequoia and pine in a tin can with earth, stratifiers and fertilizer. These sets are made as a side karmic business for the soul by people from a huge base that sells seeds. All this does not always happen (1-6% of feil depending on the plant), but it is in wild demand. So, in December, fast herbs like parsley and flowers change to coniferous. Conifer cool.

Debriefing last year

This year we have become more careful with data. Previously, it was somehow conceptual, but now they just picked up all the mistakes of the past year and began to sort them out in steps.

We analyze security situations: for example, on holidays the number of fraudsters with fake bills, the number of attacks on the shop for petty theft (due to seller’s distractions) sharply increases.

This year, since the fall, barcode scanners have been introduced , they greatly speed up the process. Previously, some employees in the old manner entered the product code manually (I do not understand why, but apparently the power of habit). Instead of a strict ban, our specialists 1C invented to increase the delay in processing goods progressively by a few hundredths of a second with each manually entered product. I suspected that 1C developers are cynical trolls, but not so much. The calculation was correct, in December, all use scanners. They told about their way of retraining after the fact.

It is necessary to revise the process of working with pre-orders and orders through the online store (website and phone). It is necessary to postpone the goods very quickly, because if it is on the remains of 5 pieces, it may turn out that all five are standing with people in the queue.

Sellers in the fall are trained to work with crowds of people. Routine training implies that the seller speaks with one person. New Year's Eve includes the basics of group dynamics, group psychology and practical skills of working with several customers at once. How to show the game to those three who are looking at it. How to entertain the queue and so on.

We are buying a new package : Christmas trees and pigs are needed (because the year of the pig).

Analyzing the range . We put more gift books on the shelves. We deliver everything in a couple of weeks. The positions themselves are looking at the dynamics of last year. If it was sold, conditionally, 10 items, this year we bring a little more. There is almost no remnant, but if there is, it doesn't matter - buyers take them in January.

Update and check mats at the entrance to the store . AXO makes sure that there is a ground shovel everywhere to clear the ice before the point, if it is.

If the seller finds an unnecessary thing in the store (for example, an extra chair, a rack, MANPADS), he photographs it and sends it to the retail coordinator. The thing disappears.

Accounting once again carries out an analysis of the accounting of salaries and is preparing to print detailed information, to whom, how much and for what is charged.

Packages for the day in the morning immediately unpacked (separated layers), so as not to lose time. They immediately rush to business cards, which are usually issued with the purchase.

From 10 to 20 December, general cleaning in stores. Until December 15, a full inventory.

And then you can start. There is some kind of magic in this all, when you still remember how everything was done manually and communicated to each employee, and now the team works as a system, because there is a clear plan, detailed elaboration of cases for everyone, a knowledge base, a learning structure. In general, it was all difficult, we have something to improve - but this is how to see the lines “Hello, world” on the screen. It is working. Itself.