Multicategory Retailer Big Lots Streamlines
Supplier Collaboration with Centric PLMTM
CUSTOMER
Big Lots is a leading North American multicategory retailer with over 1,400 stores, selling products such as homegoods, furniture and consumables as well as food items.

Streamlining sourcing and private label development
Big Lots sells consumables, electronics/accessories, furniture, hard home goods, seasonal and soft home goods,
as well as a range of packaged foods including snacks, beverages and kitchen staples. With 14,000 SKUs to handle,
they were looking for a software platform to improve the visibility, clarity, consistency and alignment of processes
and data in order to address significant inefficiencies in global sourcing, replacing manual (Excel-based) systems
with comprehensive PLM. This would improve collaboration between buyers, merchandising, agents and supplier
teams by leveraging a single platform to drive tasks and activities.
To stay competitive, Big Lots also wanted to streamline private label sourcing and development for both food andnon-food items by improving supplier collaboration and speeding up the RFQ to product adoption process.
By investing in PLM, they aimed to increase margins, automate costing, better manage new product selections
and introductions and shorten product development timelines by optimizing key processes throughout theproduct lifecycle.

Why Centric?
Big Lots chose to implement Centric PLM due to Centric’s retail industry expertise, high level of configurability anduser-friendly interface. They were also impressed by Centric’s Agile DeploymentSM methodology, best practices andchange management abilities in moving to enterprise systems from Excel-based processes.
“The flexibility and best practices embedded in Centric PLM and the project’s Agile Deployment methodology
enabled us to react quickly and gave us immediate visibility when the US made the decision to impose tariffs on
Chinese goods,” says Ryan Shuster, Vice President of Global Sourcing at Big Lots.

Collaboration drives speed
to market
Big Lots began using Centric PLM to manage the assortment planning,sourcing and merchandise planning of non-food lines and has since
expanded the solution to include food items. Thanks to Centric’s
flexibility and configurability, Big Lots now uses it to manage 206 classesof products in 31 departments across all divisions.
On the private label side, Big Lots uses Centric PLM to efficiently manage
the merchandise planning and creative and conceptual design process.
With active supplier collaboration from the outset, teams use Centric
PLM to send out supplier requests en masse, receive product proposals
from vendors, compare quotes and convert successful responses into
products for development and retail, kicking off the next stages of theproduct lifecycle such as quality, packaging, artwork and copy. This
speeds up the process of quoting, promoting and adopting products
for launch to market. Once a product is confirmed, crucial informationsuch as finalized ingredient lists and compliance information becomes
available for packaging and legal teams. Changes are updated in realtime, giving both internal and external teams an accurate and reliable‘single source of truth’ that reduces errors and enhances collaboration.

“We chose Centric PLM
to manage assortments,
merchandise planning,sourcing and to streamline thesupplier RFQ process. We now
have centralized product datafor hundreds of branded andprivate-label consumer goods
and packaged foods products
for better visibility, team andsupplier collaboration andfaster time to market.”
Ryan Shuster, Vice Presidentof Global Sourcing at Big Lots

© 2021 Centric Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

CUSTOMERBig Lots is a major North American
multicategory retailer, selling both food andnon-food lines.

CHALLENGES

BENEFITS REALIZED•

Flexible solution easily adapted tohandle products across all divisions,including food & beverage products•

More efficient supplier requests,
quote comparison and productadoption process•

Efficiently managing assortments withover 14,000 SKUs•

Improving internal and externalteam communication•

Real-time ‘single source of truth’ data
improves speed and accuracy•

Enhancing supplier collaboration toimprove the ‘quote and promote’ process••Streamlining private label productdevelopment and packaging with full
supplier collaboration

Supplier collaboration on private
label products from the outset of thecreative/inspiration process•

Packaging and legal teams can
immediately access up-to-dateingredient lists and complianceinformation from suppliers•Expanding PLM workflows to cover foodas well as non-food items

PROJECT
Big Lots uses Centric PLM to manage theproduct lifecycles of both food and nonfood products. Centric PLM streamlines andcoordinates the process of supplier requests,
quote comparisons and selection of products
for retail, and has improved the efficiency
of private label product development andpackaging with greater supplier collaboration.

“The flexibility and best practices embedded in Centric PLM and theproject’s Agile Deployment methodology enabled us to react quickly
and gave us immediate visibility when the US made the decision toimpose tariffs on Chinese goods.”
Ryan Shuster, Vice President of Global Sourcing at Big Lotswww.centricsoftware.com© 2021 Centric Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software, Inc.
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