Intermarché Super and Hyper Markets Dole

The Challenge:

Time-consuming cash processes were keeping cashiers in the cash room and away from the sales floor.

With successful stores, came large volumes of money to manage. Cashiers and supervisors were spending a significant amount of time in the cash room counting, sorting, and balancing instead of serving customers. Management knew staff time would be better spent on the sales floor interacting with customers and delivering an excellent store experience.

Manzoni envisioned the highest level of customer service in the Intermarché Hyper store. He saw value in returning to traditional handcraft food preparations but in a modern market setting. For instance, the store ages its own Comté, the signature cheese of the region. The wheels of cheese are on display in beautiful glass cases that make the cheese department a feature of the store. The butchery is a full service counter with butchers offering meats cut to order and counseling on the best cuts for customers needs. The seafood area of the market, has an impressive selection of seafood and also offers fresh fish which is smoked right in the store.

Artisan offerings and a premier service culture requires the full attention of the entire staff to deliver the best service from the beginning to the end of the store experience. Once Arca demonstrated the return on investment for automating back office cash handling, the owners were very interested in the benefits the solution offered.

Valerie Palio, the store’s Cashier Manager could see the potential time and money savings. “I came to the Arca solution for two reasons. The first, cash register errors. The second was time. Cashiers took a long time to count (tills) in the morning and the evening… These are the reasons why I wanted another more sustainable and secure solution for the money that still flows through us.”

The Intermarché Hyper also offered a lobby coin system as a convenience to its customers. Since the store owns the coin system, they wanted to make use of the coin for their own tills. But separating and counting such a large volume of mixed coin was extremely time-consuming for cashiers. They needed a solution that could help them manage this coin and avoid the fees that CIT charged to pick up the coin and process it.

When Arca provided the stores with an ROI analysis for automating their cash operations, these visionary owners understood the potential benefits. Both Intermarché Dole locations decided to implement Arca cash solutions to streamline their operations.

The Solution:

Eliminate manual cash processes to save time and money, reduce errors and get staff out on the sales floor with customers.

The Dole Intermarché Hyper wanted to reduce the amount of time cashiers spent counting and balancing tills and to decrease balancing errors they were having. Palio explained, “(Cashiers) have trouble counting their cash registers when there is a lot of change, which has often resulted in errors.”

The store was on a floating system which meant the cashiers did not check tills daily against the point of sale system but only at the end of the week. “Before, each cashier had a box with €200 in, which was assigned to her every week, and she handed it in with the €200 at the end of the week.” said Palio.

Even with a floating till system, Intermarché could clearly see the benefit of cash automation. Palio manages 40 people including cashiers. Cashiers were spending a significant amount of time counting cash at the start and end of the day as well as resolving numerous errors. The cashier manager knew the Arca solution would be a more sustainable and secure way for the store to manage cash.

The Results:

Significant time and money savings that they used to add additional checkout lanes.

The Arca solutions have allowed both Dole stores to reduce their operational expenses. The stores have been able to redirect those savings toward new service offerings. The time and money savings at the Intermarche Hyper location were equivalent to one full-time employee. With those savings, they invested in two new cashier checkout lanes and four self-checkouts. Even the Intermarche Super location, with only seven checkout lanes, realized substantial time and money savings to support the solution.

Thanks to the Arca solution, they were able to save 30 minutes per cashier per day, a total of 16 hours of labor time, every day. “For the cashiers it was a small revolution, no more boxes to count. They would arrive in the morning; they would pick up an empty box that they would fill from a machine.“ said Palio, describing the streamlined till issue process. “Of course, the box is just right, we don’t need to recount it back, we were saving a lot of time.” she added.

In explaining the new end of day process, Palio said, “In the evening, at closing time, of course, all they had to do was deposit their cash float in the machine and the counting was done automatically.” This was a dramatically different experience for cashiers who had been accustomed to spending a lot of time resolving balancing errors. She also enjoys the added security the solution offers, “The fact that the cashiers empty their boxes every night in the machine and we can transfer the banknotes to a secure bag is a security for the staff and for the company because the sealed bag is delivered directly by CIT to the bank.”

One important factor in their decision to implement the Arca solution was the coin recycling technology. The coin recycler tipped the balance because it allowed them to count and sort the lobby coin efficiently for use in their tills. Their cashiers no longer had to spend a lot of time managing the lobby coin inventory and the store could further save on fees for CIT coin processing and frequent pickups.

Palio remarked that her life is easier with accurate till balancing and happy cashiers. She said she has more time to focus on managing her cashiers and assisting with other activities throughout the store.

The Arca solution has streamlined operations for both Dole stores and allowed them to redirect resources they used to spend on cash handling, to investments that enhance the customer experience. They have experienced the improved operational efficiency they hoped for and enjoy the additional benefits of happier staff and exceptional customer service.