There is no room for complacency in today’s enormously competitive retail environment.

Even a New Zealand chain with the long tradition and reputation of the Farmers Trading Company can’t sit back and expect customer loyalty alone to retain its market share.

In the past two or three years, customers have observed dramatic make-overs of Farmers’ 55 department stores nationwide and its nine home centres. The stores have been transformed to provide customers with a stylish, modern shopping experience where the surroundings are almost as important as the goods for sale.

But not quite.

As Farmers’ chief information officer Peter Burggraaff is well aware, the logistics of ensuring the hundreds and thousands of different stock items are tracked and replaced in a timely and efficient way is key to ongoing customer satisfaction.

“While we were getting it right on the shop floor, we were playing catch up with our IT operations. It’s all very well to be progressive on the outside. We needed to be equally cutting edge in our internal technological systems.”

And so Farmers called in soft-ware development specialist Intergen to bring the retail chain’s IT function into the 21st century along with the rest of its operations.

“Farmers’ systems were predominantly mainframe-based,” says Intergen Auckland manager Shaun Donaghey. “There were too many platforms, including outdated ones, and a lack of coherence between disparate ad hoc applications. And that was resulting in a roadblock where Farmers needed a highway.”

The challenge Farmers was facing was a basic misalignment between what the chain thought it was doing and what the business thought it was doing.

“We needed better planning and forecasting and more reliable and accurate information across the business. The way forward, Intergen showed us, was through new technologies within a large scale SAP environment,” Burggraaff says.

“Farmers needed to cull the mainframe, reduce operating costs and make decisions that would support business interaction at all levels,” says Donaghey.

“We are now heading towards the most advanced retail POS environment in the country, and a key part of this strategy involves using BizTalk Server 2006. The fact that we are first to go there is a trump card we were happy to play,” Burggraaff says,

"It's hugely exciting to have the opportunity to use Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, especially given very few in New Zealand, or in fact the world had got their hands on it."

The biggest winner of Farmers’ forward technological thinking is the customer.

“The shopper is highly unlikely to appreciate the smooth process of buying a lounge suite; their cosmetics or junior’s new pyjamas is due to state-of-the-art computer systems.

“But BizTalk Server 2006 means that all the supporting processes from the cash register at point of sale, through to stock pricing, inventory and stock control are all seamlessly and accurately conveyed within the SAP structure,” Burggraaff says.   

At a store level, BizTalk Server 2006 means sales transactions are processed hourly from the store controllers to SAP, right up to Christmas trading closing at midnight. Or overnight, new catalogue lines and pricing information gets processed to each of the 63 stores ready for doors opening in the morning.

“BizTalk Server 2006 has been an important step in making POS information the best it can be. Or, to put it another way, BizTalk helps provide the eyes and ears that Farmers needs as a leading retailers,” Burggraaff says.

“With more that 63 store frontages nationwide, Farmers is very happy to be first with this window of opportunity.”

For more information
Shaun Donaghey
General Manager, Auckland
Intergen
09 966-3072
021 359 061
shaun.donaghey@intergen.co.nz
www.intergen.co.nz

October 2006