Case Studies: Retail

FNAC is an innovative retailer that sells cultural and consumer electronics in stores and through its Web site. FNAC distinguishes itself from discount stores by having highly competent employees who have extensive product knowledge. To extend this high-quality and informative service to online customers, FNAC teamed with Microsoft and used the Windows Vista™ operating system to create a new smart client application for FNAC.com. Through this application, customers interact with product information as never before, greatly enhancing the buying experience. FNAC stores have also implemented the application on Windows Vista kiosks. Looking to the future, FNAC expects to deliver a more informative and consistent customer experience—both in stores and online—and looks forward to increased online sales.

Fossil designs, develops, and distributes stylish accessories and apparel around the globe. Account executives at Fossil Group Australia lacked the latest information about pricing and inventory when travelling around the country taking orders from wholesale customers. High-demand items were often out of stock by the time orders were entered. Retailers couldn’t be sure that they would have the stock that customers wanted when they wanted it. To deal with these issues, Fossil deployed a mobile sales solution from Spectrax that connects users with current inventory data using Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV, Microsoft Dynamics Mobile Development Tools, and Windows Mobile® software. Since then, the amount of sales tied up in back orders has fallen by 80 percent. And account executives can now provide their customers with actual inventory levels, and orders can be shipped in hours instead of days.

One of Argentina's largest grocery chains, Disco S.A. relies on an automatic replenishment system to manage inventory. Originally running on Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000, Disco upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and revised procedures to achieve significant performance gains. Running on SQL Server 2005, the automatic replenishment system manages the company's entire distribution system, giving managers at Disco up-to-the-minute information on inventory in every store.

The largest food retailer in Africa, Shoprite Group, serves 11.6 million customers with quality brands at affordable prices. The South Africa-based company needed to modernise its point-of-service (POS) tool to maintain its competitive position, introduce new products, and improve customer service. After considering several options—including Linux—Shoprite opted for Windows® Embedded for Point of Service, which is designed to provide retailers with a platform for diverse POS applications. As a result, Shoprite has achieved complete modernisation of its stores with a cost-effective solution that is fully supported by Microsoft and offers greater security. Shoprite is introducing new products and services on its POS system because more companies support Windows than its previous system. Shoprite is using the latest technology due to its Microsoft low-cost volume licensing agreement.

Based in Seoul, Korea, E.Land Group’s Retail Division has become a major force in fashion and discount retailing, partly through its expertise in brand management and merchandising. E.Land Group has four product lines that it sells through 93 of its own discount stores. The success of E.Land Group has enabled it to expand through a number of mergers and acquisitions in recent years. In order to help standardize its operations on SAP ERP, the company decided to move the SAP ERP data from newly acquired properties, which had been running on a UNIX\Oracle platform onto a multi-terabyte SAP ERP database hosted on Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) running on Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 Datacenter Edition for Itanium-based Systems.