Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/473095
W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 21 M A R C H 9 , 2 0 1 5 Verrill at Bull Moose points to another advantage. Because the system can infer — he says accurately — what customers want to buy, fewer employees are needed in the ordering process. Early on, each Bull Moose location ordered its own items to sell. ree to four people were involved in the reorder- ing, Verrill recalls. "ey spent hours buying what they wanted and thousands of dollars on things they thought were cool, but didn't sell," he recalls. "at could amount to hours a week in stores every week. Now a total of four people do the reordering. And we want the customers to decide on what's being ordered." FieldStack's software and services are part of a field known as supply chain management. North American sales of that type of software hit billion in , up more than from the prior year and on a high growth trajectory going forward, according to Gartner Group, a market research firm in Stamford, Conn. Playing the odds Wickard says he got the idea for the statistical system, which is based on the probability of custom- ers buying an item in the future, because he loves math and science and sees their value when applied to retailing. One of his heroes is German physi- cist Werner Heisenberg, known for his uncertainty principle, which relates to how humans affect a particle they're trying to measure. Heisenberg said a precise measurement is not possible, and suggested people rely on probability and mathematical formu- lations to come up with the best estimate. "In most things in life, you want to be the least wrong," says Wickard, who applied the notion of the likelihood a customer will buy a certain item in the future to his software, which he has trademarked. e software's features evolved from the origi- nal Bull Moose program through a series of new companies Wickard founded to advance the product: first was Crickery Wood, then Nanocran and finally FieldStack. Located behind Po' Boys & Pickles in the former Ladder Engine firehouse, FieldStack's lobby is adorned with black-and-white photos of the horse and buggy firefighting days and former pump trucks, while its storage room is stacked with miscel- laneous piles of DVDs and CDs from Bull Moose. e original point-of-sale software used in Bull Moose stores, known as the Willow Retail Suite, factored into an equation the probability that a spe- cific music or movie title would sell. at equation also calculated the likelihood of Bull Moose having that item in stock and at a price that would give the store the best margin. e next company, Crickery Wood, added office applications and an ordering system, and made the software easier to use for the non-programmers at Bull Moose, like Verrill. "Brett worked on a way for all the rest of us to use it," says Verrill, who has been with Bull Moose since it started in . "Before that, it was back-end pro- gramming" that only a technical person could handle. Verrill says letting the software run the reorder- ing saves time. "e statistical processes Brett wrote into it do the reordering automatically," he says. On a typical day before noon the system handles to orders, each with to different items. Maine 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 207-774 -1531 New Hampshire 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 603-716-2129 Vermont 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 844-840-8233 Providing energy-saving solutions to businesses in northern New England for nearly 60 years. 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