The Harvey Nichols estate has seen rapid growth in the last few years and relatively quickly has had to go from a single store mentality to a point where there are stores across the country. IT, particularly with regards to the Knightsbridge Store, just hadn't caught up.

The old EPoS kit, which consisted of PCs as opposed to retail dedicated units, had reached the end of its life. Harvey Nichols was embarking on a new PoS project, mainly driven by Chip & PIN and the desire for new functionality, with Itim Technology Solution's Chameleon PoS system. The Knightsbridge store was also the only remaining store not to have touch screen technology at till point, which needed to be addressed.

The company hadn't originally intended to focus on EPoS - the original driver for their most recent IT change being the retailer's ageing warehouse and merchandising system but, as Martin Schofield, Head of IT comments, "Chip and PIN came along and we had to do something on the PoS side. We needed an EPoS application that supported the latest advances including Chip & Pin compliance."

DigiPoS was selected to provide an EPoS hardware solution for the Knightsbridge store due to its ability to provide a cost effective, innovative solution that would have a considerable impact in improving efficiency and shop floor functionality and in cutting maintenance costs.

Schofield is very clear on his reasons for choosing the DigiPoS solution, "In Retail Blade, DigiPoS were able to provide us with a well-respected, cost effective solution to updating our EPoS. These factors, coupled with the obvious benefits Retail Blade offers in terms of flexibility and ROI, and our strong, established relationship with RTC, DigiPoS Systems' services division, meant our decision to award the contract to DigiPoS Systems was a very logical one."

The Retail Blade system, which Harvey Nichols has implemented, consists of the Retail Blade Host, a passive backplane which houses all the POS connectivity and the Retail Blade, a replaceable motherboard and hard drive which slide in and out of the host, enabling unrivalled speeds for upgrades, repair or maintenance.

With Retail Blade, it is possible for retailers to maintain a core stock of replacement motherboards which authorised, non technical staff can replace and upgrade in-store in less than 60 seconds. None of the peripherals are disturbed, the 'host' system remains in place and any downtime is cut dramatically.

The implementation of the Retail Blade solution, means Retailers can virtually eliminate the costs of conventional maintenance. In future, they will be able to respond quickly and effectively to where the problem is, potentially eliminating thousands of pounds of maintenance which is there "just in case".

The main motherboard - the Blade - and components have a strong 3 year warranty, but the host system is also covered by a ten year warranty period. As technology develops, retailers will have the confidence that the upgrade path can be limited to the main areas of need - disk storage, processor speed etc, without replacing the whole system and peripherals.

Harvey Nichols completed its EPoS selection process in September 2003 with the intention of implementing the DigiPoS 1.2Ghz system throughout their Knightsbridge store in September 2004. This was following a successful pilot which began in October 2003 with the refurbishment of the Fifth Floor Restaurant, Bar and Café.

However, in November 2004, having been introduced by DigiPoS to the benefits offered by the recently launched Retail Blade, the retailer reconsidered and decided to opt for the new Retail Blade system instead.

Roll out of the new EpoS application was then deferred to the spring of 2005 to avoid any disruption around the Christmas sales period. The retailer was also keen not to roll out Chip and PIN in January because it was waiting to gauge customer perception to the implementation.

Harvey Nichols installed the 150 new tills at its Knightsbridge store over the Easter weekend along with the software to cope with Chip and PIN. The implementation went to timescale and the store was fully operable for next day of trade.

"The store was up and trading as planned on Monday and sales processed into the existing merchandise solution without fault," said Schofield. "The whole implementation went incredibly smoothly. It's the smoothest implementation I've come across."

To date, Retail Blade coupled with the new EPoS application from Itim has been very well received. Sales transactions are now passed on in real time and the new solution has enabled far more information to be made available at till point, allowing far quicker and more efficient assessment of stock availability and position. Till operators have found the new, space-saving touch screens intuitive and easy to use, and the printers to be significantly quicker allowing for much faster transaction times.

The PoS upgrade has made Harvey Nichol's expansion easier and because it plans to open a new store in Dublin this year, it will now be able to cope with multiple currencies.

"However, we are going to realise the real benefits of the DigiPoS solution in the future," comments Schofield. "With the implementation of Retail Blade, non-technical store staff will now be able to affect blade replacements and upgrades without having to rip out the entire PoS to ship back to the manufacturer, as a result we won't lose valuable uptime waiting for a trained technician to arrive."

Contact
Digipos
www.digipos-systems.co.uk