Northern Tool + Equipment powers retail excellence with Dynamics 365

Northern Tool maintains a high standard of customer and employee service across its 130 retail stores and wanted to improve staff onboarding, enhance inventory visibility, modernize returns and payment processes, and speed up end-of-day processes.

Northern Tool selected Dynamics 365 Commerce point-of-sale solution to streamline retail operations and enhance the shopping experience for customers and employees across its retail stores and service vehicles.

With Dynamics 365 Commerce, Northern Tool achieved faster transactions and made it easy for employees to locate inventory at other stores, improving customer shopping experiences and increasing customer satisfaction.

Northern Tool + Equipment (Northern Tool) has been serving the people who do the tough jobs since 1981. The family-owned business has grown from a guy in his garage to a leading retailer and manufacturer of world-class industrial tools for pros and do-it-yourselfers alike, with more than 130 stores across the United States, catalog and web shopping, three distribution centers, and domestic and global manufacturing facilities. Northern Tool transformed its production and fulfillment operations with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Intelligent Order Management, but ever the builders, the company geared up to tackle retail challenges. Northern Tool uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce to reduce issues such as time-consuming onboarding of new employees, difficulty locating inventory at other stores, and cumbersome end-of-day and other processes, and to improve the shopping experience for both customers and employees.

“With Dynamics 365, we created a solution for the store management to be able to perform all functionality from wherever they are at any point. If we need to transact where the generators are being sold during a hurricane, or need aisle inventory validation or price checking, we don’t have to keep our customers waiting.”

Steve Spears, Vice President, Retail Sales, Northern Tool + Equipment

Customer-first approach leads Northern Tool to Dynamics 365 Commerce

Northern Tool prioritizes building long-term customer relationships and aims to exceed their expectations. Northern Tool implemented Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management in 2022 to manage ecommerce fulfillment, provide a more modern user experience for employees, and drive enhanced customer experiences. With a better view of inventory across its distribution network thanks to Dynamics 365, Northern Tool customers enjoy reduced lead times and greater buying confidence that when they buy, their order will arrive at their home or job site on time. But Northern Tool saw more opportunities both in front of and behind the counter, such as a suboptimal shopping experience, difficulty locating inventory at other stores, time-consuming employee onboarding, and slow end-of-day, returns, and payment processes.

Dynamics 365 Commerce was the tool that Northern Tool needed to plow through efficiency speedbumps and deliver a smooth retail journey. No stranger to tough jobs itself, in 2023 Northern Tool rolled out Dynamics 365 Commerce to each of its 130 stores and 18 service trucks in just 90 days.

Modern mobility for sales and service

Northern Tool is focused on getting customers the tools they need, when and where they need them. In addition to three or four fixed point-of-sale (POS) stations, each retail location is also equipped with two Microsoft Surface Go devices for mobile transactions. “With Dynamics 365, we created a solution for the store management to be able to perform all functionality from wherever they are at any point,” explains Steve Spears, Vice President, Retail Sales, Northern Tool + Equipment. “If we need to transact where the generators are being sold during a hurricane, or need aisle inventory validation or price checking, we don’t have to keep our customers waiting.”

Each store has a full service and repair center, and service trucks bring both the store and the service center to customers on-site. Whether a customer needs a repair or installation, pays in cash or with credit, Northern Tool’s service trucks, equipped with new mobile POS devices, are effectively stores on wheels, providing customers with the ultimate in convenience.

Better inventory management a huge win for customers

At Northern Tool’s stores and distribution centers, inventory levels are synchronized between Oracle JD Edwards and Dynamics 365 as orders flow in from various channels and are processed and received. In the past, in-store inventory updates were made manually, often resulting in unaccounted transfers. A store would simply sell inventory it didn’t have and signal another store to initiate a transfer. Restricted visibility and time lags associated with manual processes sometimes led to misplaced inventory, inventory shortages, and missed shipments. Now, not only does accurate and up-to-date inventory data make inventory management and store replenishment seamless and efficient, but order processing and fulfillment are smoother as well.

“We can guide customers faster than we ever could before. At the point of sale, the cashier has the ability to see inventory in the other stores and create a will-call order, allowing the customer to pick up the goods locally.”

Seth Flynn, Product Owner for Retail Systems, Northern Tool + Equipment

For instance, the POS accurately reflects inventory in an individual store and at other locations, vital information when time is of the essence and a customer can’t wait for an item to be shipped. Seth Flynn, Product Owner for Retail Systems, says that any way to get customers the tools they need faster is a huge win, and with Dynamics 365 Commerce, “We can guide customers faster than we ever could before. At the point of sale, the cashier has the ability to see inventory in the other stores and create a will-call order, allowing the customer to pick up the goods locally.” Dynamics 365 also makes it easy to move items to and from BOPIS orders.

Smoother operations for store employees

Dynamics 365 hasn’t been a win just for customers, though. Store employees benefit from an improved layout and intuitive interface. The system’s user-friendliness, along with a strategic change-management approach designed to cascade from super users all the way to hourly workers, eliminated the need for over-the-shoulder training. Gone are the days of the three-ring training binder. Now, users self-guide through a digital checklist. Training a new cashier used to take two weeks—with Dynamics 365 Commerce, getting an employee up and running on a register takes just four days.

And when they’re at the register, the new POS system allows in-store employees to provide faster and more effective customer service. Before Dynamics 365, employees—sometimes a cashier with a line of customers waiting—had to call around to other stores to find inventory. It was slow, time-consuming, and frustrating for both customer and employee. Now, Northern doesn’t lose the sale, and customers know their items will be waiting for them at the closest available location.

A rewarding shopping experience with Dynamics 365

Northern Tool’s customers love their local stores’ periodic bucket sales, but checking out a customer with a five-gallon bucket filled to the brim used to be a sensitive process. As lines of customers eager to take advantage of the promotion grew, cashiers had to painstakingly sort the bucket’s contents to be rung up in a particular order. A mistake meant having to start the transaction over. With the help of implementation partner Avanade, the Dynamics 365 POS includes a “bucket sale” button that allows cashiers to enter items in any order and speed customers through the line.

An integration between payment processor Adyen—using the Dynamics 365 Payment Connector for Adyen—and gift card processor SVS supports Northern Tool’s gift card program.

What’s next

Northern Tool + Equipment continues to strengthen its omnichannel operations through integrations with Dynamics 365 to all systems to reduce manual work and improve efficiency. The company is also looking forward to streamlining parts and service operations with Dynamics 365 Field Service. With Dynamics 365, Northern Tool + Equipment will continue to ensure the tools its customers need are always within reach.