kikki.K Case Study
Background
Since being founded in 2001 by Swiss-born Kristina Karlsson, kikki.K has expanded its operations globally. The chain now includes over 100 stores, with another 250 stockists – making this luxury stationery brand available in more than 147 countries.
kikki.K’s popularity rose from its Swedish design heritage and attention to detail. This is evidenced in every element of their products, from the packaging and minimalist aesthetics to the hand-drawn illustrations found across its entire range of stationery and giftwares.
In the words of Tom Kaewkhampa, kikki.K’s Chief Financial Officer, “we see our customers as guests making sure the purchasing experience is consistent and familiar whether purchasing in-store or online. We do this by focusing on staff product knowledge, offering a cohesive collection and keeping the company’s purpose of helping people live their best lives every day at the forefront of everything the company does.”
The retail chain’s strategy has lead to a staggering 70% of all purchases made by returning guests, a metric closely tracked by Tom and his team at kikki.K.
Why Ento?
We asked Tom what led the company to look at workforce management software and why kikki.K selected Ento as their vendor of choice. He advised the key criteria was set by the executive team. They aimed to find a cloud solution that could scale with the company’s projected growth over the next five years. Key requirements included:
Intuitive UI
kikki.K needed a platform that had an easy-to-use interface, so a high number of staff would adopt the solution.
Reduce Inefficiencies
They also needed a solution that could reduce manual HR processes, such as rostering, capturing time and attendance, back-filling shifts, and onboarding employees.
Optimise Costs
In particular, kikki.K’s executive and finance team were looking for a solution that could optimise labour costs, while also increasing sales.
Support a mobile workforce
The system they employed also needed the ability to support a mobile friendly workforce.
After an extensive process reviewing several vendors, Ento was identified as the preferred solution based on the system’s ability to solve these key requirements.
Achieving 100% of labour costs budget since implementing Ento
Results
Since implementing Ento, kikki.K has seen significant improvement across all of its key criteria set during the vendor selection process. Tom noted several key improvements:
Reduced Labour Spend
kikki.K use rostering and time and attendance data to drive labour cost visibility across their network. Now, they no longer exceed labour budgets and have since achieved 100% labour cost budget since implementing Ento.
Reduced Admin Time
The average time spent by managers rostering has been reduced from eight hours per week down to two, with some locations rostering even faster by simply rolling a roster forward from the previous week.
Improved Forecasting and Analysis
Budget and forecasting analysis would previously take a full day each week. Thanks to Ento’s ability to quickly export clean data, the time to complete forecasting is now less than three hours.
Improved Onboarding Experience
Onboarding new employees in-store or at Head Office is considerably faster thanks to the intuitive design of the platform.
75% reduction in rostering time
Next steps
As the Executive Sponsor on kikki.K’s workforce management project, Tom is far from finished. With plans to leverage demand data (footfall and POS) to optimise guest to staff ratio in realtime by utilising Ento’s Demand Driven Rostering, his ultimate goal is to increase sales without needing to grow his team – a goal we can’t wait to help him achieve.
‘My portfolio is growing but my team doesn’t need to grow because we have the right tools. The only way to do more is to be really efficient’