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A few years back KVS Seshasai, head, IT and Corporate Quality,
Trent (Westside), was a wee bit baffled. The IT infrastructure at his chain of
Westside stores seemed to be working well, and yet as he was sitting on the cusp
of a major expansion drive, he wasn't sure about the solution that was best
suited for the future. What is good for the goose is more often not enough for
the gander.
Thus, Seshasai decided to go in for an overhaul and change his
existing IT infrastructure also. "The challenges of the retail industry are
quite unique and very dynamic. We need to constantly come up with new discount
schemes and other such promotions, this can only be done if you have a robust
infrastructure in place," he says.
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"The challenges of
the retail industry are quite unique and very dynamic" |
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-KVS
Seshasai, head,
IT and Corporate Quality, Trent (Westside) |
Trent plans to open approximately 10-20 hypermarkets across
India over the next few years and the flagship brand is Star India Bazaar. The
company has already ventured into the hypermarket format and set up one such
facility in Ahmedabad, and working to roll out the next few. The need to manage
such large volume transactions in an efficient way was the reason that made
Seshasai opt for a new retail IT infrastructure based on SAP platform.
For its Westside apparel stores located all across the country,
Trent was using the solution Retail Pro, a point of sale, inventory control and
retail management software. The company had also deployed Shawman CRM for its
customer loyalty programs and other solutions. Seshasai went in for entire SAP
Retail suite of applications and implemented them in a "big-bang
manner".
With TCS as the implementation partner the shift was not all
that irksome, according to Seshasai. "The good part is that we were able to
easily customize the solution to suit our requirements," he adds.
The other thing, Seshasai seems to be most conscious about is
customer care. "While IT helps retailers manage their supply chain,
inventory, etc in an efficient manner, the single largest improvement is brought
in terms of customer satisfaction. With IT we are able to run complex
promotions, which otherwise would not have been possible in a manual system
thereby giving good value for money for the users," he adds.
Shashwat Chaturvedi
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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