REDgroup Retail and Triquestra have managed to integrate a new point-of-sale (POS) system across 32 Borders store in the Asia-Pacific in five months.
The change followed REDgroup Retail’s acquisition of the Borders book chain in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore from US Borders Group International (BGI). The company found that the $400 million brand was using an aging fleet of POS hardware together with a 20-year-old US custom-built POS and enterprise resource environment.
Peter Kalan, REDgroup managing director, said it was necessary to move onto common software and infrastructure platforms.
“You can’t acquire 30 plus stores from a company on the other side of the world and simply switch operations on and off in a matter of weeks. It takes serious consideration, design and planning to ensure the least disruption possible to the core business trading,” he said.
“We had to implement the right hardware, software and technical and software management skills to deliver a success project.”
Having previously worked with Triquestra for its Infinity retail management software, Kalan said it was only a natural fit to request the POS software provider for its service again.
“In one location, Triquestra facilitated the training of 125 people in just three days” he said. “Success is shown in that one year on, no re-training on Point of Sale has been required across the entire REDgroup Retail chain.”
The project consisted of installing new hardware and software across 330 lanes, which ran concurrently with the SAP upgrade and included the design and build of integration between SAP and infinity.
“During the rollout, we did not miss a single hour of trading,” Kalan said. “And it goes without saying that for a retailer, trading is a business critical operation.