The Christian retail industry could save more than $16 million a year in wasted time and lost sales by improving back-room efficiencies, Future of the Industry attendees were told by an operational researcher. The potential savings were identified in a major study sponsored by CBA that saw Doug Popken take a close look at how retailers handled orders and returns.

Popken visited nine stores to view their operations close-up, and surveyed around 60 more before calculating that improved and automated inventory control systems could save small stores (under $750,000 in annual sales) around $3,700 a year; medium stores ($750,000 to $2 million) just over $15,000; and large stores ($2 million-plus) more than $41,000, an industry-wide total of $14.5 million.

Further savings of between $800,000 and $2 million could be found if stores could automatically add details of new items to their inventory lists, while cutting the problems with gift orders-where almost one in four had some time-consuming issue-could cut more than $500,000 total each year, from $132 for a small store to almost $200,000 for a large store.

Observing that Christian retail channel P.O.S. systems do not offer the “very sophisticated” inventory planning and control help that some in the general market do, Popken recommended in his CBA Backroom Study that CBA encourage the development of an industry-wide Collaborative Planning Forecasting Replenishment program.

Such systems have “been proven” in other industries said Popken, who also suggested P.O.S. providers upgrade functionality of their programs to enable automated entry of new items.