Tesco Technology Partners Scoop Four EMEA Retail Application Developer Awards
OTTO and BT Auto-ID with Marks & Spencer are also rewarded for innovation and excellence.
DÜSSELDORF, Germany —15 Feb 2006 — Tesco plc has scooped four out of eight Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Retail Application Developer (RAD) Awards. At the Retail Innovation Conference dinner held in Düsseldorf last night, Sysrepublic received the RAD Awards for Business Intelligence and Business Impact for work with Tesco plc on fraud detection, while IVIS Group (UK) collected the Multi-Channel Retailing and Innovation prizes for its affiliate management solution implemented at Tesco.com.
Other winners included OTTO GmbH & Co KG (Germany), which was presented with the Customer Experience award for its interactive television shopping system, and Marks and Spencer Group plc with BT Auto-ID Services (UK), which received the Enterprise Collaboration prize for an automated stock counting solution for RFID tagged garments.
“This year’s RAD winners are focused on helping retailers achieve greater customer intimacy irrespective of channel, with a more integrated and collaborative business approach,” said Dilip Popat, managing director, EMEA Retail Industry Unit, Microsoft.
“The winning companies demonstrate that a connected environment can maximise the potential of existing systems and link with those of external partners to help deliver the optimum shopping experience.”
Now in their sixth year, the Awards attracted entries from Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Norway and the UK, among other countries. The judges were Michael Gerling (EHI), Austin Bendall (Cornwell Management Consultants), Edward Westenberg (Capgemini), Georg Kube (HP) and Hansjoerg Bausch (Kaufhof).
The EMEA RAD Awards winners
• Business Intelligence Award Sysrepublic Ltd (UK) for Fraud Detection Framework (FDF).
• Special Award for Business Impact Sysrepublic Ltd for FDF. Sysrepublic’s FDF system redefines how suspect checkout activity can be identified, tracked and stopped by combining retail fraud business knowledge with technical innovation to implement a ‘Plan/DO/Review’ cycle. This enables retailers to automatically detect fraud, assess the results and tune detection methods where appropriate. The system is successfully processing transaction data in 1,800 Tesco stores. Benefits have included resolving non-fraudulent operational issues such as hardware problems that were causing the voiding of valid transactions.
• Enterprise Collaboration Award BT Auto-ID Services for Marks & Spencer Intelligent Label project. BT is implementing its Auto-ID Platform to provide Marks & Spencer with an automated stock counting solution, which incorporates hand-held readers taking information from RFID tagged garments. The technology has improved the accuracy of stock checking and has considerably reduced time spent on this function. Unique details from the tags are also used so that the right stock is sent to the store to ensure good availability of sizes. Each department also has a preset tolerance percentage so that the count can be validated. Benefits include improved availability leading to increased sales and customer satisfaction.
• In-Store Systems Award WorkPlace Systems plc (UK) for ChangePlanner. WorkPlaceChangePlanner allows retailers to look at the balance between existing staff rosters and the demands of customers. It identifies the optimum shifts for a typical week, providing alternative staffing scenarios ranging from small impact changes to working hours through to redefinition of the full-time/part-time mix, using details of footfall, deliveries and point-of-sale, information, combined with labour standards. This helps ensure that peak periods can be more accurately planned and the right number of extra staff can be recruited.
• Multi-Channel Retailing Award IVIS Group Ltd (UK) for Sonetto Affiliate Channel Management
• Special Award for Innovation IVIS Group Ltd (UK) for Sonetto Affiliate Channel Management. Sonetto allows category managers at Tesco.com to dynamically manage marketing via multiple affiliate networks and price comparison sites. The solution helps ensure that affiliates are supplied with accurate customer-oriented product data, which is included or excluded quickly according to competitiveness, availability and pay per click level. Tesco.com has achieved a number of benefits, including a 20 per cent increase in click through rates from affiliates and the implementation of new affiliates has been reduced from weeks to days.
• Supply Chain Award Torex Retail Solutions Ltd (UK) for Lucas Planning. Lucas Planning supports and enhances the efficiency and accuracy of the buying and merchandising functions, by providing an integrated planning and supply chain solution. It manages stock arrival at distribution centres and constructs allocation plans based on demographics, store size and climate. It also allows planners to balance stock levels against relative demand for each category and instantly warns of supply issues. Typical benefits include the reduction of unproductive stocks by around 30 per cent, the reduction of overall stock holding of up to 2 per cent and the increased efficiency of merchandising teams of around 50 per cent.
• Special Award for Customer Experience Otto for OTTO MCE-Shop. Multi-channel retailer OTTO is anticipating two-figure growth rates for its mail-order company due to the popularity of Media Center, the world’s first interactive television shopping device. Developed jointly with Microsoft on Windows® XP Media Center, customers can have the functions of TV, radio and hard drive recorder for digital recording and storing of television programmes, music system, photo archive and internet PC in a single appliance. Via its interactive OTTO shop featured in the Media Center, consumers can access the entire OTTO product range of over 100,000 items and watch product demonstrations. Users can also continue to watch TV as they shop in a small window within the screen.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential.
About Microsoft EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)
Microsoft has operated in EMEA since 1982. In the region Microsoft employs more than 12,000 people in over 55 subsidiaries, delivering products and services in more than 139 countries and territories.
About Microsoft Smarter Retailing
Microsoft Smarter Retailing helps retailers win today by leveraging current investments, and win tomorrow by easing delivery of new retail experiences. Consisting of Smarter Shopping, Smarter Selling and Smarter Operations, Microsoft Smarter Retailing is designed to close the loop between the retailer’s strategy, the in-store execution and familiar technologies already in the consumer’s hands. More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/smartretail.
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