In 2012, Starbucks made a big decision. They decided to provide armored carrier service to all their approximately 7,900 U.S. locations. The reason? They wanted to consolidate banking relationships and decrease the amount of time required for store managers to conduct banking activities.
This transition and the tools they used to make it are the reason Starbucks won the 2015 Alexander Hamilton Bronze Award for Treasury Transformation.
We are very proud that DTS Connex played a key role in delivering award-winning results. Today, Starbucks utilizes our DTS Connex Change Order, Change Order Payments, Deposits, and Cash-in-Transit modules.
Tanya Strawn, Senior Treasury Manager, and Andrew Teachout, Business Analysis Manager, at Starbucks were interviewed about the award in an article published by Treasury and Risk, featuring all 2015 Alexander Hamilton Award winners. The following are some highlights from the article that highlight how DTS Connex has helped Starbucks:
Now Starbucks stores have the tools they need to stay on top of their cash flows. A courier comes to each store on a regular schedule. The courier brings change that store managers ordered through DTS and takes the store’s cash deposit. The transaction usually takes less than five minutes. It is recorded in DTS and given a 10-digit unique ID. DTS developed that unique ID for Starbucks in order to follow a transaction through its entire lifecycle. At the time, this was a new idea to the retail industry, but it’s now being used by other companies.
This has also accelerated Starbucks treasury’s examination of discrepancies and controls. ‘Rather than doing general matches and hoping they’re consistent, we have item-to-item matching,’ Strawn says. But the back end is transparent at the store level. ‘The store does not have to worry what bank they’re using, or what courier deposits go through,’ Strawn adds. ‘They simply interact with the Web portal. Then on the back end, DTS sends those messages to the different partners. So the store’s request in DTS manifests itself as a change order on the courier’s next delivery date.
Congratulations to Andrew and Tanya from Starbucks! We are delighted that Starbucks has found great success in their transition to full armored carrier service, saving 82 million minutes per year in managers’ time and $2 million dollars in annual mileage reimbursements.
Read the full article here about Starbucks and the other award winners.