Headquartered in Toronto, Holt Renfrew is a specialty apparel and accessories retailer that operates 11 stores throughout Canada. The retailer, which has been in business 170 years, began as a modest hat store in Quebec. After making a reputation for itself as a fur dealer, it went on to become one of Canada's most prestigious retailers, selling international brands by well known designers, as well as cosmetics and fragrances from London, New York, Paris, and Milan. For years, Holt Renfrew used manual processes to manage payroll for its 3,700+ employees. This involved filling out manual timesheets and transferring that information to Excel spreadsheets, the data from which was manually keypunched by the payroll department for calculation and processing. For each week's payroll, which was distributed on Mondays, stores transmitted their hours for the week on Thursdays, including predicted payroll hours for the upcoming Friday and Saturday. Before the payroll was completed on the following Monday, each store would have to phone in any amendments to the predictions to reflect actual hours worked on Friday and Saturday. This process was very stressful to the retailer's two payroll employees, who had to make numerous last-minute adjustments before cutting the payroll checks. Furthermore, the manual process, with its repeated data entry steps, was filled with the potential for errors. When errors did occur and employees received incorrect paychecks, it took time to refigure the pay, and the affected employees wouldn't receive the missed pay until the next week's checks. Errors in the retailer's favor were frequently not discovered at all.
Used with permission from Integrated Solutions for Retailers magazine
