Helping Local Customers Overcome Challenges

Goodwill’s mission here in central Oklahoma is to help people overcome barriers to employment.

We’ve been operating in Oklahoma for 85 years, with a long history of helping people. We’re proud of that legacy and excited to continue building on it.

A Manual Process That Lacked Technology

In 2020, we decided to identify a point-of-sale and barcoding platform for our retail stores.

We began by evaluating nine different vendors and ultimately chose Celerant as the provider best suited to our needs. Our previous system relied on manual processes with very little technology.

We recognized the value of investing in a state-of-the-art POS system that could help drive our business by improving data collection, increasing inventory accuracy, and streamlining our day-to-day operations.

Point of Sale with Customization

In an average year, Goodwill Central Oklahoma receives more than 600,000 product donations.

Every day, we sort through these donations and identify which items are best suited for the sales floor. This means our production rooms have a tremendous amount of inventory to process.

One of the key benefits Celerant offered during the customization process was the ability to design screens specifically for our production rooms. We created screens with large, easy-to-recognize buttons, allowing us to train employees to work quickly and accurately sooner than we ever imagined.

Automatic Batch Printing and Scanning

Celerant has significantly reduced the time we spend pricing our wares and textiles.

Previously, pricing was a very manual process that required us to mark every item individually with a grease pencil. Now, employees in the production area can batch-print tags. As soon as they select a category, the system prints the appropriate price tags, making it much faster to get products onto the sales floor.

We use a color-rotation program based on the color of the tag assigned to products each week. Once an item reaches its fourth week on the sales floor, it receives a 50% discount.

Before implementing Celerant POS, cashiers had to manually apply the 50% discount to every item. Now, they simply scan the barcode, and the system automatically applies the discount.

Related: Explore Celerant’s Inventory Management Solutions »

Ease of Training for New Employees

We’ve found the system very easy to use, and our cashiers have learned it quickly. A typical customer transaction now takes less than half the time it took with our previous system.

Collecting Data for an Improved Customer Experience

We can now track and identify which products sell best at each location. As we continue collecting more data, we’ll be able to tailor each store’s inventory to better meet the needs of its customers.

Related: Explore Celerant’s Back Office Reporting Tools »

Improving the Transaction Process

I would highly recommend Celerant to any Goodwill organization. We’ve already seen significant financial benefits.

Our average customer transaction value has increased by a little over a dollar since implementing the system. That makes a meaningful difference to our organization and, most importantly, to the people we serve.

We now have more funding available to provide additional training and programs that help people find the right jobs for them.