14
MULTICHANNEL
AURORA INVESTS IN MULTICHANNEL EXPERIENCE
A
urora Fashions has made strategic multichannel investments BT Expedite and its e-
with a strong focus on delivering a joined-up customer commerce division BT Fresca
experience. have supplied Aurora Group
With 1,377 stores in 45 countries, Aurora Fashions owns High IT with electronic point-of-
Street fashion brands Karen Millen, Coast, Warehouse and Oasis. As sale (EPoS) systems and its
part of the shared resource it provides to its four fashion brands, Integrated Store, which will
alongside another fashion brand, Whistles, the group IT function has initially be implemented at
made an extensive commitment to BT’s retail products and services Warehouse, allowing for multichannel integration such as ‘click and
portfolio. collect’ in-store and integrated SMS text-based gift card capabilities.
It also uses the FrescaCommerce platform for online shopping
across all fi ve brands, along with web design and marketing services
THE CO-OP TAKES
for some of the brands, multichannel merchandising, product
sourcing and customer order management functionality.
POS MULTICHANNEL
John Bovill, Aurora Fashions group IT director told Retail
Technology: “Our rationale and drivers are all about the customer
One of the UK’s largest retailer’s long-term commitment to experience and delivering what they want consistently across
developing retail IT systems in-house has paid off at the point-of-sale each of our brands. The expectation is that we should be able to
(PoS), allowing it to offer multiple customer service, payment and deliver the same customer service levels, wherever the customer
feedback ‘channels’. touchpoint may be.
The Co-operative Group invested in an in-house PoS system, “We’ve delivered a common systems platform with BT over the
known as InControl, running IBM’s StorePay in 2005. Driven in part last couple of years. The challenge is now that we’re on a journey,
to prepare to for the migration to chip and PIN terminals, it also where the bigger changes are on the process integration side, asking
integrated Smart Technology Solutions’ (STS) SmartNS software to store teams to deal with multichannel capabilities, like ‘click and
link up any smart card application, through any point of interface to collect’, to support sales and international growth,” he added.
any business system, such as the IBM StorePay payment application.
Lawrence Freeman, The Co-operative Group’s development
manager, spoke to Retail Technology about how that investment has
underpinned its development ever since. “InControl is now used in
around 4,000 stores and 13,000 lanes, which is more than ASDA and
Sainsbury’s. But we think of it as much more than EPoS [electronic
PoS],” he said.
“Many years ago, we wanted to develop open architecture systems
that would allow functionality needed in stores not to be tied to
any specifi c device, so we worked with Microsoft to develop a
blueprint of how the software should be phased. Now we don’t have
restrictions in deploying functionality on PoS and handheld devices. “
To date, The Co-op has expanded its PoS functionality on its
chip and PIN payment terminals to gather customer feedback and
improve the customer experience, as well as introducing self-service
and mobile checkouts.
Where the PoS systems were able to drive cost and process
effi ciencies, by streamlining deployment, integration and maintenance
overheads, Freeman said the most recently introduced mobile PoS
(MPoS) solution is more about improving customer service.
“The MPoS solution was all about getting our staff to get
customers checked out of the store faster,” he explained. “But we
deliberately didn’t buy too many new devices, but instead used
the system to manage pre-basket processing and integrate with a
payment station elsewhere. This also meant there was interaction
with customers while they were queuing, increasing loyalty, while also
delivering increased throughput.”
The Group also recently announced it was launching its EPoS and
store management system into the retail technology market, branded
InControl-Evolution.
RETAIL TECHNOLOGY JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010
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