Interview with Mike Rubino

April 7, 2012

1. What do you think makes Best Buy most appealing to its customers?
• There are multiple things that make Best Buy appealing:
1. Always has the newest products available
2. Employee Knowledge
3. Good Customer Service
4. Able to demo and play with products in store
5. Services and Geek Squad
6. Keeps our customers connected.

Just to name a few.

2. How long have you been the general manager for this Best Buy location?
• I’ve been general manager at the Howell location for a year. Since April 2011.

3. Do you think Best Buy is honestly the best competitor out there?
• Yes. I do believe that Best Buy is the best competitor out there, not only because we have all the latest software and products, there is constant employee training (E-Learning’s) going on year round so our employees stay up-to-date on all products, and also to cross-train employees is a huge focus for our store especially for the changes to come. We offer price matches to other retailers and our finance is among the best in retail.

4. What brand of software do you use?
• As a company we use NIKU and Oracle for software and IBM for Hardware.

5. What system do you use for scheduling?
• Time and Labor Center (TLC) allows Leadership – anyone with access – to go in an edit shifts, make and publish their actual department schedules, and accept or reject any requests that their employees put in. It also is what every employee must go through to punch in and out of work. It allows them to do shift trades, request off, and makes changes to your availability.  Every employee also must acknowledge their hours every week in order to get paid. 

6. How are you using IS to enhance performance?
• We use a MATRIX system that breaks down the company’s numbers piece by piece – daily there are department goals, store goals, and company goals.  We even break it down to individual employee tracking.  Every department has their own trackers and goal sheets to follow.  In MATRIX there is a performance tab - you can go in by specific departments or a store as a whole and look up to see exactly how you are doing (ex. What you’re selling the most of, what areas you need to improve more in, and our standings as a district, etc.).  It usually updates every hour.
• We also keep track of employee sales by plugging your numbers into the Point of Sale (POS) system when ringing a customer up.
• IS keeps everything organized, easy to access, and easy to read. You know exactly what you need to improve on and you are compared to the rest of the stores in the district so we know where we stand.  There are monthly meetings for the bottom 3 performers (store-wide) to meet and decide how they can enhance performance as a store.
• It brings awareness to the employees.
• Keeps everyone as a company up-to-date.

7. What are some of your Company strategies?
• Sales Excellence  
1. includes the ability to cross sell.
2. Target your ideal customers

Among many other things...

• TRUST

• Thank the customer for coming in
• Respect
• Understand
• Solve Together
• Thanks again
  
  

8. How long have you been with Best Buy as a company?
• 11 years
  
  
9. Have you been a General Manager at any other stores?
   • Only one other store, Holmdel.
     
     
   10. How do you market locally?
   • There is always an ad in the newspaper every week, our sales go from Sunday to Saturday.
   • We also have coupons for The BP Weekly, a local paper in Lakewood, NJ.  It is a way to drive some more traffic in the store.
   • Commercials.
    
   11. What would you recommend a customer doing when they need troubleshooting?
• Products come with a 30 day tech support option where you can call 1-800-GEEKSQUAD (1-800-433-5778) to walk you through any troubleshooting problems.
• There is a  NEW 30 day return policy on all products and services with no restocking fees.
• Customers can go online to bestbuy.com to look up product features and reviews to help the them out.

12. What type of ordering system does Best Buy use?
• Order Management System (OMS)
1. Can order from the warehouse or any other store ANYWHERE that has the product available.
2. Track the order at anytime
3. More convenient system for customers… “We are never out of stock on anything”
4. The store that orders it gets the credit. If we are out of stock on an item doesn’t necessarily mean we have to lose out on the sale.

13. How are information systems used to cut costs?

• Best Buy as a company has recently announced that they will be closing 50 U.S stores so they could focus more on the smaller format stores.  With that, our store is not closing, it’s not the busiest of stores, but we have just found out that we are going to become a community store. I really don’t know much about it yet but it from what other GM’s of other community stores say, I hear it's fun. Best Buy will be going through a lot of changes as a company in the next few months.   We are going to possibly be cutting some positions and unnecessary labor and doing so will help the store and departments bonus more. We won’t know much until the changes in the corporate office are final.
• These changes should help lower the company’s overall cost structure and produce 800 million dollars by fiscal 2015. 

14. Do you use social networking?

• I would really like to get a little bit more involved with social networks as a store but we do have a Facebook page that gets updated with store offers and weekly deals.
• We are really involved with email. We use Microsoft Outlook. We send emails throughout the day. Constantly are checking emails. It’s how we, as a store, are connected.
• ShopKick - an app that allows you to earn points everytime you enter the store and even by scanning certain products.  Points are redeemable and customers are able to use them towards anything in store or online. 

15. Do you use any outsourcing?
• Yes we do we have:
1. The HelpDesk - any problems with registers or scanners
2. Bridge - helpline employees can call for just about anything they are having problems with.
3. IBM - a lot of times IBM will come in and take care of technical issues.