Home Depot Expands Buy Online Pickup In-Store Chainwide

Home Depot, which currently offers a Buy Online Pickup In-Store (BOPIS) capability in more than 100 stores, will complete a chainwide rollout of the service during Q3 of 2011.

"Even without marketing, we're seeing a strong interest in this capability," said CEO Francis Blake during a recent conference call. "About 30% of the visitors on our website who use our 'check inventory' functionality make the purchase in the store within two days. We also see that a significant percentage of BOPIS orders result in an additional purchase on the day of pickup."

The home improvement retailer is also putting a strong focus on improving store operations. "We have piloted a new scheduling system for our associates that will eliminate approximately 30 hours per store per week of manual scheduling activity," said Blake. "The system has been very effective at both reducing the time required to create schedules and in making the schedules more visible and predictable for our associates. With the time saved on scheduling activity, we can increase the time allocated for customer-facing activity. We'll have this rolled out throughout the U.S. by the end of the year."

The scheduling solution is part of a multi-year effort to increase the proportion of time store associates spend taking care of customers, flipping the percentage of non-customer facing activities in its store payroll model from 60% to 40%. "We're over 50% now, which is a great milestone," said Marvin Ellison, executive vice president of U.S. stores.

Another productivity enhancement is centralization of Home Depot's returns process. "Today, we process returns individually in 2,000 stores in the U.S.," says Ellison. "We're going to create three large central locations and all stores will be processed in those locations. It's going to be a huge productivity and payroll savings."

Home Depot is also localizing its merchandising. The retailer provided its merchants with increased capability to vary assortments by store during the past quarter. "Category assortments were planned in more detailed levels than in the past," explained Craig Menear, executive vice president of merchandising. "Using the outdoor patio category as an example, we plan not only dining and seating combinations by local store, but also cushions, umbrellas and chairs.

"Another capability merchants had was the ability to more quickly identify trends at a local store level," Menear added. "This allowed merchants to make assortment adjustments during the selling season and before the season was over. These capabilities continued to add value for both our customers and shareholders."