Amsterdam, 28 July 2003 - IBM is rolling out an advanced new point of sale application designed specifically for supermarket and hypermarket retailers. IBM's VisualStore is an innovative solution which aims to dramatically reduce the time-to-market for introducing promotions and selling to store customers. The application introduces a cutting edge promotions engine to the market, allowing retailers to respond to customer demands faster than ever before. The flexible new rules-based system gives retailers a distinct competitive advantage, avoiding the time and expense of writing new code to implement promotions.
This means that new marketing strategies can be introduced quickly, with the speed required to maximise sales opportunities in the highly competitive grocery market. Special offers, loyalty points programmes and discounts can be rolled out with greater ease than ever before. Promotions can be set up and managed centrally or on a store-to-store basis to tackle local competitors.
The application helps minimize total cost of ownership with low requirements for Point of Sale (POS) memory and processor speed, enabling installation on existing IBM hardware. Visual Store is an open platform solution.
"In the past, our customers had to cope with the unresolved gap between the speed and flexibility required by the business and the time needed to implement new functions in the store systems," says Marco Vergani, Director of Retail Store Solutions, IBM EMEA. VisualStore provides a best of breed answer to these needs, and allows the retailer to be more flexible and effective in seizing new market opportunities and better serving store customers."
The comprehensive software solution offers a range of innovative features to implement "on demand" business models for supermarkets and hypermarkets.
VisualStore is available in five European languages.
About IBM
IBM, the world's largest information technology company, provides the Retail Industry with a full range of e-business solutions, including:
point-of-sale systems, other hardware and software technology, consulting focused on business transformation, IT strategy and planning, store operations improvement, and supply chain optimisation, and with services, such as outsourcing, managed operations, systems integration, and application development and design. IBM has been the leader in retail point-of-sale systems for 30 years. For more information on IBM Retail Solutions, please visit http://www.ibm.com/solutions/retail.
Voor meer informatie:
Tineke Mertens
PR Manager IBM Business Consulting Services
tineke.mertens@nl.ibm.com /
06- 20015092