Harrods is using a £1.5m electronic point of
sale system to help it target customers with promotions, discounts
and services.
The Epos system, Retail Java from Retail Business Solutions, is
part of a five-year strategy to move the London department store to
a service oriented architecture based on a
SAP enterprise resource planning platform. It will also allow
the retailer to integrate its growing online sales operation with
the rest of the business.
The combined system will enable sales staff to tailor their
approach to customers based on the company's knowledge of their
preferences and shopping habits, said Harrods.
David Llamas, Harrods' IT director, said, "Harrods attracts 12
million visitors a year, making it the third-most visited
destination in the UK, but we also have customers who can spend £1m
in a private viewing or via a personal shopper.
"We want every customer to have the best possible experience
when they cross our threshold."
That means making sure, no matter what sales channel customers
use, that the 1.4 million catalogue items Harrods carries are
available, presented appropriately and sold efficiently to build
and retain customer loyalty, he added.
Harrods has replaced its eight-year-old Anker tills with
DigiPos Retail
Blade tills. The retailer rolled out the Retail Java Epos
system in its airport stores in June 2006, before deploying it on
the 950 tills in its flagship Knightsbridge store in November.
Llamas said Harrods used the opportunity to install applets such
as dynamic currency conversion and sales for export on the tills to
make transactions quicker, easier and more flexible for
customers.
System availability and data security are top priorities, said
Llamas. Under Retail Java, the tills operate independently of a
central server, but the organisation has a much greater insight
into what is happening at the till because of constant message
passing to and from the ERP system.
The retailer plans to unveil a website in August which will
share an Oracle back-end server with a new call centre system to
capture and fulfil orders.
Harrods develops SOA
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