Unleasing potential retail using wireless technology

In the crazy world of commerce, few businesses are as unpredictable predictable retail clothing. In the retail industry must understand their customers closely and make clothing available to the fashion of the time, whenever matches. If not, is not only a blow to the mark, but could have serious impact on corporate profitability and sustainability of surplus stocks to be sold for scrap value. Nowhere has the creativity and innovation in the capricious world of fashion related. That was the challenge for modes Peppo Group, a clothing retailer in Thailand, the label managed as Guess, Guess Baby / Kids, Guess Accessories stores, Mango, Marciano and Castro. It has 12 independent stores and the presence of department stores in 50 games in the country. Operational nightmare After Palakorn Khisalang, IT Manager of the company, department stores constantly renew their layouts and require tenants such as Peppo to move into the building several times a year. ”This is a long and expensive for us to make our IT Architects Network after each train,” said Khisalang. “Execute as many stores advertise bazaars in the city center, making it difficult for our employees to help customers to conduct transactions outside their usual counter in store. This difference between turn made the actual transactions take place and the revenue generated. As the Group develops, management of IT operations on a distributed architecture introduces significant network latency and cost prohibitive for a small team based challenge. It has run a negative impact on the efficient collection of accurate sales and order management hindered decisive sales analysis. ”Need our staff to be able to get updates in real-time delivery performance from our warehouse back-end and based in Bangkok. Although we are a manual code bar is gone, we still need a solution that would allow employees to register, stock, when you travel, rather than returning to a central computer terminal to enter data, “explains Khisalang. IT Re-Architecture from around the Business Process The company evaluated a number of solutions including the provision of GPS and ISDN access to a single repository of data included, retail, ensuring the inventory of the warehouse, and the movement of transit of goods. Each proposal was rejected, either the cost or efficiency. A solution that seemed viable, however, was to introduce wireless technology in retail locations and in the halls. The plan is for retailers to be equipped with laptops and PDA thin client with the update manager in the wireless market. It would pass easily in the store personnel, and also between stores. A centralized distribution mechanism for all applications work has also been critical for the complete solution. The company evaluated a number of technologies and chose Citrix Presentation Server. The Citrix Presentation Server centralizes the delivery of all client applications that employees need – such as Microsoft Excel to perform estimates of income – without physical installation of these applications on any device. Employees can turn to access multiple applications from any location. ”We have requested assistance in implementing a Citrix Solution Advisor for Citrix Presentation Server 4, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 runs on two HP ProLiant servers in the data center business in Bangkok, said Khisalang. In warehouses, the company symbol handheld devices are used to perform inventory checks online via Citrix, with security on the network using a VPN with two-factor authentication combined with RSA SecurID token comprehensive approach and password. Citrix has been used to optimize the process of inventory management. Because the Foundation for the access infrastructure, Citrix Presentation Server allows staff to access in real time to a proprietary solution called ERP “PEPPOS”, which is suitable for retail management via PCs and PDAs without thread. As goods enter and leave rooms, the bar code is attached to each scanned item, so that staff to monitor inventory movement. Previously, she had to walk a LAN terminal for manual entry of data. The new wireless solution reduced to a more effective way to track inventory in warehouses, front-line sales staff can now access online the latest information from virtually any computer securely . ”All these factors play an important role in our decision to the Citrix solution game, allowing mobile enterprise applications and wireless, and we believe this innovative application of technology allows us to build a highly adaptable model detail, “adds Khisalang. Part of the original claim in the choice of technology has been the concern of the user training. require involved with only four members of the IT team, Peppo a solution that provides minimum training required for everyone in the use of new mobile devices would be required. Peppo hard to identify the right combination of hardware and software to effectively mobilize their employees and ensure a safe and efficient access to company information. Peppo, but also to achieve still faces a number of business and technical challenges to realize the full potential of wireless technology on the overall operation. From a business perspective and allows a wireless infrastructure is not readily available at all locations because of constraints imposed by the department stores. Even when possible, it can sometimes take several months to finalize negotiations with management. Benefits received by the centralized delivery model By centralizing the management and deployment of applications on Citrix servers and deploy virtualized access to applications on PDAs, Peppo is able to more easily manage and store relocations counter sales without regular bazaars central point of sale terminals and other devices to install, it saves time and money. At the same time, improve employee productivity in detail, because they need more time from fixed terminals and data collection on foot. Similar improvements were also observed in the warehouses of productivity using inventory tracking in real time. Centralized management has helped to keep Peppo, number of employees to four, despite a significant increase in the number of branches and users of IT. That the installation of two weeks earlier or upgrade software company now takes only one hour. ”With Citrix Presentation Server solution, we are in a position approximately 340 employees at 50 locations in Thailand with secure remote access to business applications provide wireless via an ISDN 128 kbps PDAs 802nd on 11b / g wireless interface, Khisalang beams. These applications include Microsoft Office 2003, Oracle Database 10g and PEPPOS. Low flow pressure is also essential to business productivity as the back-end and retail fronts. Accountants can print remotely the daily operations of the Central Office. Warehouse Assistant Notes can now shipping, invoices, packing lists and price tags, and wireless. “We can now literally link data to an outlet anywhere in Thailand or the world overnight, unencumbered by the typical technical obstacles are other companies,” adds Khisalang. Surprisingly, the new solution, a significant deterioration in the requirements of bandwidth leads Peppo. The company uses a 128 Kbps connection to any point on the Citrix server at headquarters. Conventional technology would require a 512 Kbps or 1 MB of bandwidth demand would. Peppo believes he will be able to save up $ 1,600 of bandwidth per site only. ”I recently attended a retail conference in Bangkok, where the emphasis on how it should be used as a catalyst for retail businesses. Among the technologies mentioned were’ve used these years ago Peppo. Many have not already integrated wireless – the technology. I think that businesses receive in trade and industry benefit from these technologies, “concludes Khisalang. “Well, we found the right formula to enable a mobile enterprise applications, wireless infrastructure, we will continue to implement our new stores as we expand our presence in Thailand.”