Jacques Vert Group Relies on MNP's Modular OMS for Multichannel Management

Evolving from a concession-only store-based business to an omnichannel retailer requires strategic thinking. Jacques Vert Group, the British fashion house and womenswear concession retailer, resolved this by making new internal appointments to ensure the business had a new retailing platform fit for its purposes and best placed to take the business forward.

Key to the business is to harmonize the inventory, ensure availability, and deliver the brand promise to both the trade and a growing number of direct customers.

Jacques Vert relied on its incumbent Merrit retail sales platform supported by Retail Assist for the Product Lifecycle Management and buying function, as well as the merchandising, plus a WMS for logistics. They implemented a new eCommerce platform from DemandWare with its ability to scale and manage the challenges of cross-border direct retailing; this was handled by London-based Tryzens.

But the big challenge for the business was how to join all this together to provide a robust, efficient end-to-end solution centrally supporting the business with real-time information. A modular OMS platform from MNP Media Ltd. in Salisbury now provides the crucial middleware. Integrated to receive the basic SKU information from Merrit, the OMS further embellishes product information, manages the local inventory, and presents this to all direct sales channels. Receiving orders from 9 concurrent websites, the OMS allocates inventory in real-time to ensure customer expectations are managed. A Sunderland-based customer service team uses the OMS to provide order taking and customer services for all channels.

The selection of the OMS platform was based on MNP’s proven track record of high volume order processing together with its experience in multi-channel retail both in the UK and overseas. As MNP's clients include Lakeland Limited, Kurt Geiger, Pure Collection and LK Bennett, Jacques Vert Group considered it was in good company.

With acquistion of Priam, elucid, and One iota, Sanderson prospers

Sanderson will celebrate its growth in Omni-Channel Retail at Internet Retailing Expo (IRX) by showcasing its new, extended range of software solutions which are enabling some of the UK’s best known multi-channel retailers to prosper effectively.

Sanderson now has over 250 multi-channel retail customers using its proven solutions for stores, eCommerce, mobile commerce, and supply chain operations. 

Littlewoods and Mamas & Papas are two good examples of the multi-channel retailers the company has added to its extensive customer base, following the recent acquisition of cloud solutions specialist One iota and multi-channel software company, Priam.

IRX visitors can discover the very latest range of software, including the renowned Elucid system, at the Sanderson stand (K40); from multi-channel retail software for managing all sales channels and back office fulfilment operations, to state-of-the-art solutions for integrating your on and offline retail channels, including:

Smartpod – bring ecommerce in-store with an ordering facility offering instant access to your complete product range - boosting store sales, increasing conversion rates and avoiding potential lost sales.

Mobile PoS – a queue-busting, assistive tablet ordering and payments solution - assisting customers with a premium service and seamless shopping experience.

BI Dashboards – providing a greater insight into your business - enabling faster, data-driven decision making and highlighting opportunities to improve performance.

Multi-Channel Retail Systems – whether you’re looking to manage all your sales channels in a single system, or achieve smarter stock control and faster delivery timescales, we’ll help you to deliver a joined-up customer experience.

The complete Sanderson product portfolio will be on show at Internet Retailing Expo including the latest releases of the highly successful multi-channel retail systems, Elucid and Priam. And the team will be on hand to discuss the substantial business benefits Sanderson has brought to its customers.

Managing Director, Ian Newcombe says: “We are excited to bring together all our solutions and omni-channel expertise for the first time at IRX and look forward to showing the capabilities of our powerful new solutions to the industry."

What's The Prognosis for Dynamics/AX?

CRN, which provides news, analysis, and perspective for Value-Added Technology Resellers and technology integrators, suggests that Microsoft's selection of Satya Nadella as CEO is not a good omen for Microsoft's Dynamics/AX and other Microsoft "ERP" solutions because "he is the guy that actually presided over the decline of the Dynamics ERP line."

Says NetSuite president and CEO Zach Nelson, "I certainly don't think it is going to get a ton of attention from him. It didn't have attention when he actually ran it."

Celerant Introduces Web-based Stratus Retail

Celerant Technology Corp is offering anticipates further enhancements to its existing omni-channel retail solutions in eCommerce, mCommerce, and mobile solutions.

“During this past year, we have laid the groundwork for omni-channel retailing with the introduction of new mobile technology, vertical-specific interfaces and even standalone applications that do not require a wireless connection,” said Ian Goldman, CEO of Celerant. “Celerant’s integrated system will provide retailers with greater flexibility and efficiency in selling and fulfilling across multiple channels and locations and thereby increasing their earning potential.”

Celerant’s new web-based, complete system, Stratus Retail, which was unveiled at the NRF Show, as well as several Command Mobile and standalone inventory applications, including mobile POS, price check, physical inventory, transfers, purchase order entry and receiving, enable retailers to manage their business from anywhere in the store, and from almost any location. Celerant also introduced catalog interfaces with a wide, and continuously increasing, range of vendors for any vertical, including bicycle, sporting goods, firearms and more.

PayPal Streamlines Online Checkout, Expands Mobile Payments

While PayPal announced Beacon last September to support hands-free mobile payments for in-store shoppers, it has also recently improved its legacy online business.

According to mCommerce Daily, "Now when people select the 'pay With PayPal' option at checkout from an online store, the entire process of logging in and entering billing or other information takes place on the retailer’s site, instead of having to first go to a PayPal page."

“In addition, merchants only need to do one integration to get the same seamless checkout experience on a computer, tablet, or smartphone,” according to Don Kingsborough, VP, retail services, PayPal, in a blog post announcing the upgrade and other developments. PayPal is testing the updated checkout system with selected partners and will make it generally available to large online merchants in the first half of 2014, then roll out to small and medium-sized businesses.

Later this year the company will also allow customers to log into a retail site with their PayPal ID to further speed up checkout.

“If you are logged in and check out, all of your shipping, preferences and payment information is automatically populated. All you need to do is click the checkout button and you're done,” stated Kingsborough. Notes mCommerce Daily, "That’s similar to the 'Login and Pay with Amazon' service ... introduced in October to let people make purchases on other sites using their Amazon credentials."

"PayPal also announced the expansion of Payment Code, a new capability it recently debuted that lets shoppers use a scannable QR code or four-digit short code to pay in-store via PayPal’s smartphone app. Already available at 1,500 locations in the U.K., the service will extend to many merchants using the MICROS and Discover point-of-sale (POS) systems starting in February."

Regarding Beacon, PayPal's Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-powered system for physical stores that lets PayPal app users automatically check in and pay at retail locations, Kingsborough said the company is testing Beacon at few merchant locations in the U.S. and Australia, with more soon joining the trial in the U.K., Canada, France and Germany, with integration into the PayPal app expected early this year.

ShopSocially Adds A/B Testing Component

In an article by Calvin Azuri, TMCnet Contributor on the Five9 Outbound Call Center site, ShopSocially announced that the company has added an A/B Testing component to its eCommerce platform, which will enable retailers to measure the impact on specific metrics such as sales conversion and revenue generation from onsite social commerce modules added to their eCommerce Websites.  "The move is a big leap towards addressing the challenge of quantifying the social commerce impact into tangible benefits," notes Azuri.

ShopSocially’s A/B Testing framework allows retailers to strategically channel Web traffic, routing some users to social commerce campaigns and not routing the other users. This will enable the retailer to measure the impact from the social commerce campaign, since all other aspects remain unchanged (a true A/B test). Retailers can also use the A/B Testing framework to route users to various versions of a social commerce campaign to measure the impact of different commercials.

Staples Wins Supply Chain Innovation Award With Smart Packaging

With excessive packaging as the top complaint of customers, Staples found a technology that created the right size box for every item shipped from its eCommerce centers, reports SupplyChainBrain.

With Packsize's On Demand Packaging technology, boxes are now customized for each order through an integration of systems, equipment and processes. As a result, they have reduced percent of occurage by more than 15 percent, benefited from approximately 60 percent reduction in air bags and reduced break-pack cube by about 20-percent. Overall, there was roughly an 8-percent improvement in overall cube of orders.  Plus, 74 percent of Staples workers say the solution has made their job easier. 

Each day, SupplyChainBrain reports, Staples ships 650,000 - 1,000,000 cases from its U.S. fulfillment centers, operating  under well-tuned logistics system that guarantees any order placed before 5 p.m. will be delivered the next day to 96 percent of the population.  Approximately 40 percent of these cases are less-than-full-case orders.  These so-called break-pack orders have traditionally been picked into 7 to 14 different sizes of corrugated box types with the system selecting the best-fit box type based on the dimensions of the items in the order.  Nevertheless, almost 40 percent of the cube is wasted.

When Staples first considered the viability of the Packsize system, a major requirement was the solution’s ability to keep pace with the parameters of Staples’ current order cycle times. “We could not reduce Staples’ ability to meet its customer service in any way,” says Kiessner. “One of the primary challenges was the total speed.”

"With delivery time sacrosanct," says SupplyChainBrain, "Packsize officials adapted their technology to interface with Staples’ order management system to automatically calculate via an advanced algorithm the optimal box size for every incoming order and route it to the proper fulfillment center and the most suitable machine at that center."

Click HERE to read how the On Demand Packsize technology works in practice.