Belk: Leveraging Advanced Labor Analytics

Belk, a privately held department store chain with nearly 300 stores in 16 states, applied Reflexis’ advanced labor analytics intelligence to its workforce management processes, improving customer service and employee productivity. The company did this after quickly and successfully deploying the Reflexis Workforce Scheduler™ and Reflexis Advanced Analytics and Reporting™ applications.

Belk now uses workforce data to generate more equitable schedules that increase profit across its chain of stores. This enables an improved associate work/life balance and better customer service, says Scott Delmar, Director of Workforce Management at Belk. This is crucial. As Delmar says: “Scheduling associates in a store can be a very emotional undertaking. These are people’s lives and livelihoods.”

The Advanced Analytics and Reporting™ rollout was “basically plug-and-play,” Delmar says. “We had a brief orientation with our partners at Reflexis and that afternoon we were writing reports to help us understand what’s going on with our business.”

On a weekly basis, Belk gains insights into a store’s actual labor spend versus that location’s projected annual labor budget. Belk analysts measure quality of schedule performance by such categories as line of business, department, and store. The application can drill down into 15-minute intervals for workforce scheduling insights.

The system also enables commissioned associates to know the best times to be on the floor, selling, which makes them more productive. Ultimately, says Delmar, the workforce analytics application initiative is “more than about just us, it’s about the customer.”