Winner

India’s first Hypermart from Shoppers’ Stop

Shoppers’ Stop deployed various technologies for the roll-out of HyperCITY, a one-of-its-kind hypermarket. From a technology standpoint, the challenge was to deploy technologies that had never been used in India before. Further, the company wanted to have common applications across all retail formats.

HyperCITY was a completely new retail format that the Shoppers’ Stop group had embarked on in order to diversify and capitalise the immense retail potential for hypermarkets. The group started selecting the technologies for this venture around August 2004. The technology selection involved acquiring several pieces of software and hardware.

Says Unni Krishnan T M, Customer Care Associate & CTO, Solutions & Technology Team, “We first focussed on closing the enterprise software applications like JDA-MMS (merchandising), E3 (advanced replenishment), JDA-WinDSS (Point-of-Sale - PoS). Then we started focussing on hardware, where we tried to look at what is available in the local market and then searched across the global to find technology that will provide us the strategy differentiator. Thus we sourced technology from the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.”

At this point, the group took a strategic call to have a common application across all retail formats after an extensive evaluation. The company is among the early adopters to use the IBM i550 performance server in the industry, on which the JDA-MMS and PoS application resides. In order to optimise the hardware cost, four enterprise applications and six retail formats are running on a single server.

About Shoppers’ Stop

The K. Raheja Corporation group of companies laid the foundation of Shoppers' Stop on October 27, 1991. One of India's biggest hospitality and real estate entities, the Group entered the lifestyle segment with Shoppers' Stop. Shoppers' Stop is a leader in the Indian Retail sector and one of the pioneers in setting up large format department stores in India. It has a national presence, with over 7 lakh square feet of retail space with stores in Mumbai (7), Delhi, Bangalore(3), Hyderabad, Jaipur, Pune(2), Kolkata(2), Gurgaon , Chennai and Ghaziabad. The chain stocks over 200 international and Indian brands. From its inception, Shoppers' Stop has progressed from being a single brand shop to becoming a fashion and lifestyle store for the family. It is the only Indian member of IGDS (Intercontinental Group of Departmental stores) along with 29 other global retailers. Shoppers' Stop has been awarded Super Brand status 2003/2004 by an independent Superbrands Council comprising of the most eminent professionals from Marketing and Advertising out of a national list of 711 brands across 98 categories.

A challenging task

Shoppers’ Stop having been successful in lifestyle and books retail formats, subsequently decided to branch out into the hypermarket format. The initiative was challenging in itself because the use of state of the art technology was never used in the Indian Retailing segment before. The company had to implement a set of technologies from scratch. In addition, the selection and deployment of technologies had to bring in efficiencies, productivity and justify RoI requirements.

“Some of our biggest challenges involved sourcing this technology and building it in India. This has never been done before in India, hence, we had to develop the entire solution on our own. In many instances we had to provide guidance to the manufacturer or developers of the technology in building the solution,” says Unni Krishnan.

He explains further, “Our key focus area was to cater to the A & B target market segment with a hypermarket format. Today HyperCITY-Malad store is the most successful hyper market format in India. We went all out to bring technology that has previously never existed in India or never used in large numbers. The entire shopping experience for the customer is unique and highly satisfying; they don’t have to face indefinite and long queues. The check out process is a breeze.”

It is noteworthy that the store achieved one million customer entries in 90 days creating a turnover of Rs one crore in a day mark and now Rs two crore in a weekend.

Next-gen replenishment and scanning

The key technology deployed in HyperCITY is JDA E3-an auto replenishment application that helps to replenish stock back to the shelf at a rapid pace. The technology helps in generating purchase orders with right economic order characteristice (EoQ), min-max quantity rules, order lead times, inventory carrying cost and so on. E3 enables the next-generation in precision replenishment.

Another interesting technology deployed is the I-Scan (Symbol Technologies-New York) that allows the customer to scan the merchandise as they pick the products off-the-shelf, thus saving them significant amount of shopping time. Once the shopping is completed, they can handover the device to the customer service desk and can cash-out quickly.

“For I-Scan, even today companies like Microsoft are still experimenting and exploring such technologies. Symbol Technologies themselves were surprised as to how we were ingenious and innovative in our effort. They originally never expected this hardware to be used in this manner,” says Unni Krishnan.

I-Scan also has small bar code scanner. From a RoI perspective, the company has used platform technology concept to apply a single hardware for many users. I-Scan has four plus applications like inventory scanner, price check, self-check, self-check-out PoS and warehousing receiving.

Jury View

The implementation is unique and they are the first to implement it in the Indian market. It is commendable that a company takes the risk of experimenting with new things, which is creating a positive impact on its customers. Tips Shoppers’ Stop has done a fabulous job but there is always room for improvement. Whatever they did resulted in value addition for its customers resulting in good business for the company. In terms of strategy, they were perfect. In terms of operations, there is some room for improvement. Jury members focussed on innovation and uniqueness of the project. We did not go into the nitty-gritties of operations. There might be more things to add to the project in the future. — Jury Member, Sunil Mehta, Senior VP and Area Systems Director, Central Asia, JWT Shoppers’ Stop is amongst the first companies in India to have a hypermarket with above 35 PoS machines in a single store. Customers who walks into the store benefits from a fast cash-out process. The company’s initiative is focused on customers, saving them a significant amount of shopping time by scanning the merchandise as they pick products off the shelf. This is the first reason for Shopper’s Stop to win and the technology deployed, which is the I-Scan (Symbol Technologies-New York) is perhaps the second reason. —Terry Thomas, Partner, Risk and Business Solutions, Ernst & Young

Fast cash-out process

Shoppers' Stop becomes the first company to set up a hypermarket in India with more than 35 Point of Sale ( PoS) machines in a single store. Customers benefit from a speedy cash-out experience. For this the company invested in advanced 360 degree scanners (Metrologic USA), using the same technology as TESCO. The model used by the company is Metrologic's latest bioptic scanner with high throughput and a slim profile for seated and space constrained checkout environments. The company's receipt printing devices had been extensively tested to ensure fast speed (20 seconds to print 60 items).

Future plans

The company will be rolling out E3 to its other retail formats namely Crossword and Shoppers’ Stop. The I-scan technology is being leveraged for fresh applications at Shoppers’ Stop. On the heels of a successful deployment of this technology at HyperCITY, the company is exploring other technologies from Symbol Technologies.