Children’s rights organization, Erikshjälpen, does incredible, life-changing work helping improve the lives of vulnerable children and children living in poverty.
Alongside donations, this work is funded by a thriving second-hand retail business with close to 60 stores. The stores – which also create jobs for people outside the regular labor market – employ 4,000 people half of whom are volunteers and, unlike the majority of charity stores, rely on a data-driven approach to optimize sales and operations.
This is why Erikshjälpen needed to find a POS system that required minimum training, was simple to use, didn’t need constant servicing or support and could complement their data-driven approach.
Besides having passionate co-workers, we’re very data driven which is one of the main reasons we were able to cope with 2020 in a good way.
– Stefan Engström, Regional Manager & IT Manager at Erikshjälpen
Like most other businesses, 2020 was a tough year for Erikshjälpen – yet more than 11 million products were sold through their stores. The combination of hard work and passionate, inventive employees meant Erikshjälpen only lost about 5% of their turnover compared to 2019 – but could keep the same profitability and as a result donate just as much as the year before to help better the lives of disadvantaged children.
Stefan Engström, Regional Manager & IT Manager at Erikshjälpen says: “Besides having passionate co-workers, we’re very data driven which is one of the main reasons we were able to cope with 2020 in a good way. By constantly analyzing sales, assortment, prices, open hours, and visitor count we’re able to constantly tweak our operations and Sitoo plays a huge role in this.
“We don’t have the resources for field service and support. That’s why we wanted to find a cloud-native system that was running on standard hardware and that was easy to deploy.
Sitoo matched the vision I had for our POS and it’s as simple as downloading it and then you’re ready to go. Sitoo is fast, intuitive, and you pick it up and it works which is a big help when you constantly have a lot of new people and a lot of short term employees.
“I’m incredibly happy with the way the collaboration between us and Sitoo has developed. The product is always evolving and the Sitoo team are great at listening to well-founded feedback and can adapt the product accordingly.”
Moving forward, Erikshjälpen are looking to take the optimization of their retail operation to the next level by following every small change in the data to be able to adapt to a changing market in order to meet customers expectations.
Jens Levin, co-founder and CEO at Sitoo, adds: “Erikshjälpen carry vital work to better the lives of children who need help and support the most. They are supported by an army of volunteers and we’re incredibly proud to supply them with a POS which plays a small – but important – role in helping them do more of their life-changing work.”
