Coop expands data warehouse

Teradata has announced that Coop, a leading retail hypermarket-supermarket cooperative operating across the Scandinavian region of northern Europe, has just expanded its enterprise data warehouse. Coop operates about 3,000 stores in three countries with more than five million customer-members. Coop's enterprise data warehouse provides critical decision-making information used at many levels throughout the business infrastructure by retail analysts across finance, marketing, sales and operations.

"We have found that our new Teradata infrastructure provides a centralised, integrated view of detailed information across many functions and regions - which has helped us more successfully manage a highly complex business involving millions of members and 60,000 employees," said Lars Frahm, chief information officer, Coop. "Our organisational network is growing rapidly, and we rely on the power of Teradata for visibility into key business intelligence details for daily decision-making - yet we also rely on Teradata for a broad, strategic view of economic drivers, trends and opportunities on enterprise scale."

According to Coop, the expanded data warehouse provides more than four times the speed, capacity and computing power of the previous system. In particular, Coop reports that with the new system, eight out of ten reports are finished in less than eight seconds.

"The new Teradata system, comprised of 5500H MPP Servers, does much more work in less time than the previous platform, and has proven to be highly scalable to accommodate our needs while performing as promised," said Peter Scheele, data warehouse manager for Coop. "Our increases in information capacity and technical performance are providing remarkable efficiencies in process management and productivity. We are seeing batch load times and response times decrease dramatically."

Coop's information management requirements are expected to grow even further in the future as the business expands across Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The current system has grown to more than 2,000 business users of the data warehouse, with expectations that the user population will exceed 3,000 users across the business by the year 2010.

www.teradata.com

BT tailors network for Valentino fashion group

BT have signed a three-year agreement to design and build a new global network for Valentino Fashion Group, one of the major players in the global fashion and luxury brands sector.

Under this agreement, BT Italia will design, build, implement and manage a new international IP MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) network to connect Valentino Fashion Group's four subsidiaries in Paris, New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, the company's Italian headquarters, and more than 50 stores across Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Luca Vianello, chief executive officer of Valentino Fashion Group, commented: "We selected BT not only for their superior technology but for their proven ability to implement and manage ongoing changes while working with us. BT's network will represent an excellent starting point to provide our stores with value-added services, including multimedia, security, and voice transmission; all of this of course using IP technologies."

The new system will provide higher availability and more security by featuring full network redundancy to ensure dual access (access to the next switch using two separate lines) for all subsidiaries and a 10 megabit transmission rate for the company's Italian headquarters. It enables Valentino Group to optimise its production capability and improve the quality of its communications.

www.bt.com/aboutbt

Mobile phone ordering applet for food delivery

Andromeda, a provider of delivery EPoS systems, has announced the launch of its "OrderAnywhere" application.

Following the success of online ordering, Pizza chains and other food delivery services are looking to Mobile Phone Ordering as the next new sales channel. To date, these services have used SMS or WAP. However, OrderAnywhere enables consumers to have a branded applet on their phone, which contains the full menu for that concept. Menu prices and offers reflect the current menu in the customers nearest store, and are updated automatically by the restaurants EPoS system.

When a consumer orders using OrderAnywhere, the order is transmitted directly to the store's EPoS system. The customer then receives an SMS confirmation that their order has been received and another as the order leaves the store.

Customers can make orders while outside of signal area, such as being on the underground, and transmit them once a signal is present.

The OrderAnywhere application is fully branded to the restaurant's logo, menu and 'look and feel' and can be deployed by text message. Consumers can get their copy by texting a code word (e.g. Pizza) to an SMS short code. Customers can pass the application to a friend and it is possible to operate a referral scheme, for example introducing 5 friends to rewards the customer with a free drink.

Orders can be placed using payment by cash on delivery and/or Credit Card with the payment infrastructure powered by the Assensha secure mobile payment system from Opiah Systems.

Ben Portsmouth, CEO of Andromeda commented "We see mobile phone ordering as the next step in the rapid evolution of food delivery ordering. Our customers have told us that SMS and WAP do not meet consumer needs for a simple, easy to use way to order from their phones. Our OrderAnywhere system meets these needs and gives delivery operators the ability to rapidly add a new revenue stream to their business. "

www.androtech.com

Bourne Leisure streamlines procurement

Bourne Leisure, owner of Haven, Warner Breaks and Butlins, has appointed Wax Digital to implement a new, on-demand purchase-to-pay solution that will help employees across the group find and order the right products, at the right prices, from the right suppliers.

The new system will ultimately allow 12,000 Bourne Leisure Group employees working at over 50 UK holiday sites to browse and order goods and services from approved suppliers via a central web portal, delivering considerable process efficiencies.

"The system, which we are deploying to Haven Holidays first, will capture all spend from the purchase of paper clips to flat screen televisions," said Simon Crawshaw, IT and procurement director at Bourne Leisure.

"Ultimately this system will allow us to better understand our key areas of spend; currently our staff might buy the same products from many different suppliers at a range of price points. We want to introduce control and compliance, ensuring staff use approved suppliers and prices, whilst helping them do their jobs more efficiently and effectively with a single point of access for whatever they need."

The complete purchase-to-pay cycle is covered from building requisitions and getting them approved, through budget management and placing orders on suppliers, goods receipting and invoice matching.

www.waxdigital.com