OMNIS Retail at Haskins Furniture

Here's the transcript of the interview

The full video is coming soon!

Was OMNIS worth the investment?

Jade: Yes, I definitely think it was worth the investment. It enabled us to pause and say, well, what do we want from a system?

The thing is, it shouldn't be that hard to sell furniture. The reality is it is quite complicated in the sense that they can change their fabric, they can change their foot option, they can have a recliner, they can change the tension. You name it, they can change it.

And having a system that supports that but also someone in the background that understands that we need to be able to do that very easily for the customer's journey is important.

Does OMNIS make you more efficient?

Jade: Definitely. So, from ordering the furniture, for the furniture coming into the warehouse, rather than there being lots of different processes to achieve the same outcome, it's now a lot more streamlined.

Tiff: With stock management, it's just there at a glance. I can see what's going on. The journey planner, perfect. I can see exactly where we're going when. You’re not having to click another button which opens another box. So yeah, definitely easier and quicker.

Enterprise eCommerce

How does the system support your marketing efforts?

Jade: The product is right online. The branding is right. We can change it easily when we go from winter sale to spring sale or out of sale. If we have a wacky idea on a Friday night that we want to put a promotion on, all we have to do is ask our graphic designer and web team to make a few changes and it's done.

Tiff: Yeah. I mean, just the other day me and Tim changed the homepage. I've just sat with him going, "Do this. Do this." So it's easy.

Mike: Yeah, "we don’t like this anymore. Change all of this and we'll all start again".

Tiff: Yeah! Give it a bit of a refresh.

Jade: We've definitely seen an increase in sales, which is great. The journey for the customer is far simpler.

EPoS

How are the sales staff supported by OMNIS?

Jade: Everything is on the website, whether that's the spec sheet or the sizes, the description. They can use our own website as a sales tool. Then the customers can go home and still continue their journey of looking at our website, even to the point of then ordering it.

Does this allow them to be more flexible with customers in store?

Tiff: Yeah, so they can take their tablet and their card machine. They don't have to leave the customer’s side if they don't need, if they don't want to. The sales team can do all the pricing from their tablet at that sofa. And then if they decide to order, they just run and get the card machine and they can do it all with them. The customer doesn't need to leave the sofa that they're buying, which I like because obviously they can sit nice, comfortable on their sofa and know what they're going to get.

Are staff able to easily add upsells like Staingard?

Tiff: I think sometimes you're in danger of the salesperson forgetting that you can add on these extra items. And actually having that prompt just reminds them gently that they can ask the customer and sell it and then obviously then we increase the order value.

CRM

We talked a little bit about making fewer mistakes. How does that impact your customer service?

Jade: It has a massive impact on it because mistakes cost us money. And it's not just money, it's the time aspect of that. If we've ordered something incorrectly or we've delivered something wrong, it all has a knock-on effect. Now with OMNIS, the sales team, they shouldn't be able to make a mistake.

PIM

That’s a major benefit of OMNIS being one unified system with one database right?

Jade: We used to have instances where customers would say, oh, well, on the website, the dimensions are different. Now, that probably was the case, because we were having to put the information in two times, whereas now it's only once. So if a customer says that, it's physically impossible. It is the same. It's the same product. It's the same price. It's the same dimensions.

Purchase Ordering

Do the sales team find it quite easy to keep track of stock levels and know what's available if you've got anything for quick ship?

Tiff: They can see in the POS or even in product lookup what stock we've got, how many are maybe reserved. With stock allocation, it's 10 times easier for them because they can see what's on POs, they can see what we've got in the warehouse or on the shop floor and they can just allocate from there.

Warehousing

How are you finding the goods in process with OMNIS?

Jade: It's pretty straightforward, to be honest. I mean, the furniture arrives downstairs, gets unloaded. The customer orders come up into the correct location. So as you can see, we're in the upholstery room. The warehouse team put it away.

Everything that comes in has a label. So very easily, you can see who that customer is. And then it's registered onto OMNIS that the goods have arrived, which triggers an alert to the sales team. So they can book the delivery.

RMS

How about for you personally, the dashboard reporting to be able to see what's going on sort of day to day?

Jade: I love the dashboard. It means wherever I am, I can, at a very quick glance, look at how the business is performing without having to drill into reports or inputting various things to get the information I want, I can just see it. And I really like that.

So which bit of dashboard are you looking at the most?

Jade: The daily sales. So it drives my husband mad. I can just flick onto my phone, have a quick look. And then if it's good, I'm like, oh, what has been selling. I can easily look on OMNIS without it being too many issues.

Which is one of the benefits of a cloud system. You can get into it from anywhere.

Jade: Yeah, definitely. With our old system, I had to take my laptop everywhere with me if I wanted to log into the system. Whereas now, yeah, anywhere I am, I can see what's going on.

Posted by Georgia Caird
29th April 2025