VCSTIMELESS, a European solutions
provider to the non-food and speciality retail sector,
will be using this year’s Retail Solutions Show (in Birmingham from 7th to 9th June 2005) as
a spring-board to showcase its next generation product
suite, Colombus
.neXt, which will run on superior
.Net technology. The solution boasts an array of
merchandising, demand planning, and analytical
functions,
much like many others claim, but it offers retailers
the chance to personalise how a store or head
office solution both looks and works. Advantages (thanks
to Microsoft’s .Net technology and Service
Oriented Architecture) include improved ergonomics,
faster exchange of information, customisable workflow
and full integration with daily office tools such
as Outlook or Excel.
“We’ve done considerable
research into what retailers are looking for in
IT, and
repeatedly hear the same comments about what they
don’t like,” said Diane Bechard, product
director at VCSTIMELESS. “Reliability, ease
of use, and tools specific to their individual
needs come out on top of their wish-list.”
“Working closely with
retailers in various sectors across Europe, taught
us that speciality
retailers have for years battled with non-bespoke
software systems that don’t allow them any
personalisation or flexibility. Every retailer wants a tool that speaks their language, not what’s
imposed on them by vendors,” said Bechard.
VCSTIMELESS is one of only a few European vendors releasing
integrated retail software using .Net this year. Already in testing phase with a handful
of European retailers, the company expects its
new software to appeal to a wider range of retailers,
large and small. VCSTIMELESS is already the number
one solution provider for fashion retailers in
France, but has made its software easily adaptable
to the needs of retailers of DIY, domestic appliances,
toys, jewellery, beauty and sporting goods.
According
to Bechard, fashion retailers are often concerned
with size and colour; while in beauty,
a very cost-orientated business, they want to know
more about transport costs. Other specific functions
might be expiry dates on cosmetics, or the need
to track individual serial numbers on jewellery,
or the price of gold that day. With Colombus
.neXt,
users will be able to create a workflow so that
they can determine their own sequence of operations.
This means that the software can be programmed
so that if, for instance, certain products are
not sold by a certain date, an alert can be emailed
giving various options, such as discounting or
allocation to a faster moving store. “The
retailer decides which approach best fits them,
but the software shows them how,” added Bechard.
The
new version of Colombus serves most European languages,
as well as being one of the only software
solutions to cater to Chinese languages too (a
significant step given the obvious boost to trading
with Chinese suppliers after the recent GAT agreement
to remove quotas). Whether in a store, head
office or international
franchise, access to pertinent
information (like stock availability, what the
customer has tended to buy on previous visits,
and forecasting realistic delivery times), can
have a tremendous impact on sales.
VCSTIMELESS will
be presenting at the Retail Solutions conference
on why it chose Microsoft’s .net
platform to develop its latest retail management
suite, as well as presenting a case study on how
UK safari park, Longleat, is using multi-channel
technology to offer its visitors fast and efficient
entry to the estate’s attractions. Demonstrations
of its hospitality VenPoS solution, not to mention
a range of retail solutions, will be possible on
stand E42.
VCSTIMELESS FutureStore
A FutureStore area will give visitors the chance
to see how a mixture of breakthrough technologies
such as RFID, in-store
mobility, queue-busting,
sensorial marketing and intelligent
cash counting can be used to help retailers combat fraud, reduce
loss prevention, improve customer loyalty, optimise
inventories and monitor the flow of goods from
the warehouse to the store.
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