STORES Magazine - September 2008 - (Page 33)

EXECUTIVE SUITE / RFID One for the Books all Selexyz “SmartStores” will have migrated to RFID technology and the retailer’s entire inventory of approxItem-level RFID tagging imately 2.2 million books will contain at the heart of SOA for Selexyz RFID chips. The expansion of BY LEN LEWIS this technology is no surprise to Hub magine that you could check a carton of inventory in 10 seconds rather Vandervoort, chief than five or six minutes and reduce technology officer labor, increase sales and ensure customer service of Bedford, Mass.-based Progress Software and one of the arand satisfaction at the same time. chitects of the company’s SOA platform. He has worked on store systems distribution with companies ranging from Hollywood Video to German supermarket chain Kaufland. “We This retailer’s dream is no longer a fantasy thanks to an are seeing retailers do Internet price changes and yield-based RFID-driven, end-to-end supply chain solution that enables price changes based on the velocity of consumption,” he says. companies to integrate day-to-day business tasks using service“To do this you need real-time distribution.” oriented architecture (SOA). The innovative auFor BGN, the SOA journey began several years ago tomation program from Progress Software is at Twice-a-week when the company looked at its mission and the overthe heart of the customer-centric strategy emscanning can all direction of the book market. “We knew we had ployed by BGN (Boekhandels Groep Nederupgrade stock to focus more on customer service and reducing costs land), the Dutch bookstore chain that operates reliability of and less on all the back-office activities,” says Jan 42 Selexyz stores in the Netherlands and carries Vink, CIO and director of IT for BGN. “We did a anywhere from 25,000 to 275,000 books at each store to quick survey of back-office activities to find out exeach of its locations. actly where the bottlenecks were and how certain acAnd the SOA program will have an impact on tivities could be outsourced.” the entire chain by the end of next year. By then, I 97% WWW.STORES.ORG STORES / SEPTEMBER 2008 33 http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - September 2008

STORES Magazine - September 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Office Depot Unveils First Green Store Dunkin’ Donuts Debuts DDSMART What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Are You a Facebook Fan? RFID Concept2Watch E-commerce Supply Chain Marketing ERP Credit Web Optimization LP Vantage Point Newsbeat Cover Story LP Program Building Biometrics Industry Perspective Customer Service Site Selection E-Commerce LOEB Retail Letter Arts Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.