Wyevale Garden Centres has started trialling a chip and
Pin-ready electronic point of sale system to see how it handles a
planned increase in promotions.
The 110-strong chain, the UK's largest dedicated garden centre
group, plans to use the lessons learned from pre-Christmas trials
when it rolls out the system to all its stores between January and
March next year.
Wyevale said the £2m Epos system, from software supplier
Retail-J, is slated to be ready in time for the Easter weekend,
which marks the start of the busiest period of the year for garden
centres.
Wyevale finance director Tony Jones said the firm needed the
system to be able to cross-promote between different in-store
categories - a capability that its current system does not
have.
"We aim to learn from our pre-Christmas experience and we would
expect to get good value from our investment," he said.
The business case for the Epos roll-out also rests on the system
integrating with chip and Pin terminals, which Wyevale has yet to
introduce. "The cost of being non-compliant with chip and Pin is
pretty prohibitive, and the saving from introducing it is a
significant contributor to the overall cost justification of the
Epos system," Jones said.
The software is being implemented by contractor Retail Business
Solutions, with project management from retail specialist Paul
Mason Consulting.
The Epos system will provide Wyevale with instant sales
reporting for the first time. Wyevale's previous Epos system, in
use since 1997, could only send sales data to the retailer's head
office merchandising system in an overnight batch run.
One of the reasons that Wyevale chose Retail-J is because the
supplier's Epos system had been successfully integrated elsewhere
with the Mercatus merchandising system that Wyevale uses.
The merchandising system processes Wyevale's orders to its
suppliers and provides the business with the information it needs
to change the mix of goods in stores.
Tesco's route to data management:
www.computerweekly.com/219443
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