Harrods is developing a service oriented architecture to
create a single view of customer information that is currently held
in different formats on different databases.
The single customer view, which will go live before the end of
March, is timed to coincide with the complete migration of the
retailer's legacy IT systems to an SAP system.
Harrods' chief information officer David Llamas said, "We are
finalising the consolidation of our back office in SAP by the
migration of legacy systems. As soon as they are migrated, we will
have a single view of our products and consolidated reporting."
The retailer expects that the SOA will decrease the time it
takes to complete new IT projects and reduce the total cost of
ownership of its IT infrastructure.
"One of the advantages is that we move away from a point-to-
point integration so that integration is based on a single
technology. Our total cost of ownership should be decreasing as we
consolidate technologies," said Llamas.
Harrods will replace its proprietary integration tool, which had
been used to build point-to-point links between the company's
different IT systems, with the Sun Java Integration Suite.
The retailer's processing of customer information has, in the
past, "not been great", according to Llamas.
Harrods had a separate database or business process for each
different source of customer data. It ran a database each for its
350,000 loyalty card customers and for customers who had placed
orders at the department store, as well as buying lists of
potential customers.
How Harrods will transform its ITsystems
The roll-out of the SOA is part of a transformation of Harrods'
IT systems, which also includes revamps of its hardware, storage,
point of sale and business intelligence systems.
The retailer, which runs mostly Hewlett-Packard hardware,
consolidated its server estate and established its first datacentre
last November.
It will choose a supplier for a new storage area network in
February. It will also choose a business intelligence supplier in
the spring to replace a proprietary application called Executive
Console.
Harrods' deployment of a new point of sale system - both
hardware and software - is the largest at a single retail site in
the world. Harrods has at least 650 tills at any one time and as
many as 1,000 during the sales.