O'Kelley comes to RedPrairie with nearly 20 years of leadership experience, spending the past four years as vice president and chief of staff of Oracle's Retail Global Business Unit. She has also held executive marketing positions at Manhattan Associates [image-nocss] and Retek (which was acquired by Oracle in 2005).
In her role at RedPrairie, O'Kelley will steer the company's brand vision and oversee all aspects of corporate marketing, including industry marketing, campaign strategy, various lead generation activities, and other marketing-related initiatives.
"We are pleased to welcome Carol to RedPrairie's leadership team," said Mayoras. "Her unique mix of retail and supply chain expertise, combined with her talent for marketing strategy and execution at a global level, will make her an undeniable asset to our organization as we carry out our growth strategies."
In other company news, Milwaukee-based RedPrairie has announced new capabilities for Site Manager, the enhanced user interface for its Workforce Management solution. The new capabilities, including mobility features, will improve the ability of retail managers to spend more time on the floor coaching sales associates and serving customers.
"By getting store managers out of the back room managing disparate software applications and onto the floor managing customer interactions in person, retailers are finding they can increase their sales conversions significantly," said Noel Goggin, vice president of retail strategy for RedPrairie. "At one location, we found that the store was generating five to six more sales conversions for every additional hour that the manager was able to spend on the floor. That has a huge impact on the bottom line in today's challenging retail environment."
The latest addition of mobile capabilities to Site Manager came as a result of RedPrairie's persona-based development research with retail managers over the past year, which determined that managers were relying more frequently on mobile devices such as Blackberries and iPhones to manage their activities.
"RedPrairie examined what managers do on a weekly, daily and even hourly basis, and then greatly simplified the tools they need to effectively manage their labor and promotions," said Jon Lawrence, RedPrairie vice president of product strategy, workforce management. "Smart phones using Site Manager can quickly access critical labor and execution management information where the managers are located, without managers having to be chained to a laptop or their desktop, so they can spend more time on the sales floor with their staff and customers."
Site Manager also has several tools that help store managers improve productivity. For instance, the Exception Management panel in Site Manager provides a quick navigation tool that alerts retail store and district managers to items that need attention, from approaching overtime to promotion set-up status, enabling them to quickly resolve those issues.
The Schedule Editor screen allows store managers to schedule their staff automatically, to see how the schedule compares to expected demand, and to determine the accuracy of the scheduling. Store managers can even drill down to see how workforce demands for different job roles may change during different hours or days.
Site Manager's Execution Management screen enables managers to determine whether merchandise arrived on time, if they have all the fixtures they need for their locations, and to notify headquarters of any changes they made to store-specific planograms. This closed-loop process of feedback enables retailers to maximize the effectiveness of their promotions and to reduce out of stocks.
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