John Lewis Partnership secures remote access for staff

The John Lewis Partnership has signed a deal with SecurEnvoy to enable its workforce to use their mobile phones to gain secure access to corporate systems. 15,000 thousand UK employees are now using SecurAccess, SecurEnvoy's two-factor authentication solution that transforms mobile phones into virtual tokens.

Instead of using tokens or smart cards, the SecurAccess system sends a passcode to users' mobile phones. When users wish to log on to the corporate system, they enter their Microsoft User ID and password, and then the passcode that has been pre-enabled on their mobile phone. Once the passcode has been used, it is superseded with a new one sent to the phone. This pre-loading function eliminates the need to install any software on to the mobile device and provides users with access to their passcode as soon as they needed it rather than having to wait for an SMS message to be delivered.

John Lewis expects to make considerable savings by swapping from token-based two-factor authentication to SecurAccess. The user licence is cheaper than purchasing, replacing and distributing tokens, and deployment costs are lower with no need for extensive training courses.

"The John Lewis Partnership has been using traditional token based two factor authentication with its remote access systems since the late 1990's. However, after reviewing the capital, revenue and administration costs associated with the existing system we decided to look for a cheaper alternative and found SecurEnvoy's tokenless approach to be a far superior and cost effective solution," says Matthew Clements, principal programmer for the John Lewis Partnership.

www.securenvoy.com

Boots trials loss prevention solution

Boots, the UK's leading health and beauty retailer, has joined forces with retail software and services specialist, PCMS Group, to trial a loss-prevention programme. The new trial will take place at Boots's Mansfield store and will incorporate a range of measures - POS data analysis, networked video and video analytics - within one package to deliver a solution to tackle fraud, theft and shrinkage.

The retailer is a long-standing customer of PCMS's Vision SmartStore product, which uses transactional data to identify exceptions to operating norms that indicate possible shrinkage. The new initiative integrates networked CCTV and video analytics alongside SmartStore, enabling retailers to identify such anomalies through real-time analysis of security camera footage, enabling a quick response to instances of shrinkage.

Robert Jennings, head of loss prevention for Boots, said that the trial set new standards within the retail sector: "The scope of the pilot scheme we have implemented with PCMS is unique within the industry and puts us at the forefront of the fight against shrinkage. The programme was designed to examine ways of increasing profitability and improving the customer experience by making existing systems, such as CCTV cameras, work harder. It also offers wider stakeholder appeal, with features that are equally applicable to the marketing and management functions as they are to the discipline of loss prevention."

"The video analytics software has been designed to monitor footage from across the network of in-store CCTV cameras and alert store personnel automatically to certain behaviour patterns. The system can recognise when customers spend more than a certain amount of time at a particular shelf but can also be configured to identify congestion, till queue length or even spillages in aisles," concluded Jennings.

www.pcmsgroup.com

Paperchase selects Dream accounts software

High street stationary retailer Paperchase has purchased CODA's Dream accounting software product for its business, which has been trading for over 30 years and now has 100 outlets in the UK and an extensive opening programme in the USA. It trades nationwide from its own stores and also through concessions in Borders Books and Music and selected House of Fraser and Selfridges stores.

The Dream package offers flexible and scaleable user-defined accounting for growing businesses that principally operates in the UK or other English-speaking locations around the world.

"Having worked with Dream at a previous organisation, I was aware of the functionality available from the product," said Kevin Heath, head of UK finance at Paperchase. "Paperchase was looking for a system that is flexible, intuitive and easy to use, as well as giving excellent visibility over the database. Dream, through its fully integrated ledger system, meets these requirements and also contains some well thought out extra functionality. I believe this product will give us a stable base to work from, create efficiencies across the department, allow us to easily interrogate the data and hence drive an informed approach to decision making. Our financial information will be more available and more useful, to the right people across the organisation."

The software uses Microsoft SQL Server and .NET technology which provides a robust technology platform and additional functionality for users. Paperchase will be using the latest release of Dream which automates more processes than ever before, enabling time and cost savings.

Paperchase has also purchased licenses for CODA's DreamView tool which builds upon and extends Dream's in-built browsing and reporting functionality, by providing direct, seamless access to external reporting products. This will enable the company to interrogate data and prepare custom reports.

www.coda.com

New report predicts mobile ticketing to go mainstream

New research has estimated that over 2.6 billion mobile tickets will be delivered to just over 208 million mobile phone users by 2011. This is one of the key statistics from a study by Juniper Research. The report found evidence that the sector is gearing up for major launches over the next few years. Early trials, mainly led by mobile network operators, are now migrating into commercial services that are controlled by the ticketing issuers themselves.

Benefits for the ticketing issuers include reduced cost, better security to help the fight against fraud and improved environmental footprint by reducing paper. Early use of mobile barcode technology will be gradually complemented by the emergence of NFC (Near Field Communications), in particular for the transportation ticketing sector where there are already commercial deployments in the Far East and important trials in Western Europe and North America.

Most encouraging for the sector is the wide adoption by some of the major organisations that control the issuance of tickets, such as Ticketmaster, British Airways and Tickets.com. This is coupled with the involvement of the key operators and technology providers such as O2, NTT, DoCoMo, Vodafone, Nokia and Samsung.

Key findings from the report include; Savings for the airline industry of $500 million each year by migrating to mobile boarding passes, a total of almost $87 billion worth of mobile ticketing transactions by 2011 and NFC will start to create traction from 2009 onwards.

www.juniperresearch.com