Customer Case Study

In 1988, two retailers from the 1920’s , Bealls and Palais Royal, merged to form Specialty Retailers.  Over the years additional retailers were acquired and the name was changed to Stage Stores. Today, Stage Store is made up of over 850 stores across 42 states., and includes; Peebles, Gordmans, Bealls, Palais Royal, Stage and Goodes.

Challenge

Stage established EDI transactions and internally managed supplier enablement. As their nine distribution centers became reliant on efficient receipt of 856 advanced ship notices, their dependence on compliant supplier GS1-128 labels increased. Although their in-house enablement team successfully assisted suppliers with the electronic transactions, their supply chain was still experiencing GS1-128 carton labels to read the first time in their scanning environment.

In addition, Stage recognized their compliance program for POS tickets needed better supporting evidence to illustrate compliance offsets. Although they were looking at revamping their entire compliance platform, they required an interim solution to support POS ticket infractions.

Solution

Following a model successfully implement by other comparable retailers, Bar Code Graphics established a program to enable Staage suppliers the resources to comply with their GS1-128 labels and also support supply chain disruptions for both GS1-128 and POS tickets.

Our work on this project included;

• Authoring new GS1-128 barcode guidelines which are harmonized with the GS1 General Specifications and provide suppliers a blue print to facilitate compliance
• Establishing a certification program for each GS1-128 label formate for each supplier ship location.
• Implementing an education initiative within supplier compliance for GS1-128 lab infractions and consequential re-certification program.
• Created dedicated compliance portal to facilitate GS1-128 reporting and act as a image support repository for reported POS ticket infractions.

Results

Today, Stage supplier compliance and logistic departments now rely on Bar Code Graphics to address all GS1-128 label issues. GS1-128 label certification through Bar Code Graphics is integrated with vendor on-boarding and existing suppliers are now proactively re-certifying shipping labels whenever they make changes to their hardware, software or print media. Barcode re-certification is also tied directly to GS1-128 compliance infractions so suppliers can rapidly correct mistakes and reduce providing Stage Stores supply chain with non-compliant shipping labels.