How Himalaya Optical connects 200+ stores, prescription fulfilment and workforce operations with Exactlly

The counter flow runs through the customer master and eye test, product selection, pricing, any applicable campaign or discount, and order booking, and then records the technical specification the order has to be made to, together with its expected lead time. Cancellation and refund, invoicing and billing, and customer delivery are all part of the same order record.

The order is therefore not closed when it is paid for. It is opened.

Once the specification exists, the question becomes where each part of it can be sourced. Himalaya fulfils from the selling store where it can, and otherwise from another company-owned stock point, a central warehouse or a group entity, using inter-location transfers with warehouse control and store-level stock reconciliation. Movement between legal entities is handled where the structure requires it.

This is why a single availability figure is not enough for an optical retailer: the useful answer is where the stock is, and what it would take to bring it to the order.

Himalaya handles customer service orders and complaints, sales returns, repair flows and defective stock in the same environment that took the original order, so a complaint can be read against what was actually made and delivered.

Claims are managed as a process rather than as correspondence: claim stock movement, the claim order itself, issue against a claim, receipt, replacement, value settlement, the treatment of claims that remain unresolved, and reporting across all of it.

Alongside the order lifecycle, Himalaya uses the everyday retail controls the network depends on: campaigns and promotions, discounts, customer loyalty, gift cards and gift vouchers, insurance-related sales scenarios, store categorisation, stock thresholds, order acknowledgements, delivery cards, doorstep delivery, day-end closing, store petty cash, eye-test billing and card payments.

None of these is remarkable on its own. Together they are what makes a store's day close correctly, in the same record the head office reads.

Retail workforce management has to reflect store operating patterns, not a single office schedule. Himalaya runs multiple shifts and roster management, multiple holiday calendars, late and early-going rules, weekly-off controls, sandwich-policy handling and special-day exceptions, with biometric integration feeding attendance.

A store that opens seven days a week on rotating shifts cannot be administered on one calendar, and the rules that decide whether a day is paid have to be the store's rules.

Payroll runs on multiple pay structures, producing payslips and bank advice, against employee masters that carry the lifecycle with them: offer letters, appointment letters, confirmation, increment letters, resignation acceptance and full-and-final settlement, together with bonus processing and confirmation and retirement alerts. Statutory processes are handled in the same environment.

Employee Self Service carries employee requests and applications through their approvals, which matters most in a distributed network where the approver is rarely in the same building. Transfer management moves people between locations, with cross-company approvals where the group structure requires them.

Employee assets are tracked to the person holding them, and recovered and checked during full-and-final settlement, so leaving the business closes the asset record as well as the payroll record.

Recruitment and appraisal both run in exactllyHRMS. The performance cycle moves from KRA and KPI definition through weightage and target setting, self appraisal, manager appraisal and final appraisal, to a rating and the recommendation or increment that follows. Dashboards and reporting cover the workforce the same way they cover the stores.