The grocery industry is experiencing a greater level of competition with retail giants, like Walmart, entering the food business and the emergence of wholesale clubs like BJs, Costco and Sam’s Club. To stay ahead of the game, grocers all over the world are focusing more on customer service and the technology that keeps their customers coming back.
Last month, Winn-Dixie chose IBM’s point-of-sale and self-checkout technology to help transform customer service, speed innovation and increase the operational efficiency of 484 Winn-Dixie store locations across the Southeastern U.S. “This initiative will allow us to introduce services quickly and seamlessly to improve our guests’ shopping experience and will help to support our overall strategy,” said Maura Hart, Winn-Dixie group VP and CIO.
Kroger Co., based in Cincinnati, Ohio operates under several banners and is highly focused on customer service. In August, the company chose Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) for Process to further improve customer experience.
Payton Pruett, Vice President of corporate food technology for Kroger stated, “At Kroger we are continuously searching for ways to better serve our customers and believe that Oracle’s PLM for Process will enable our organization to deliver even more on our Customer 1st mission.”
Also in August, UK-based Tesco signed an eight-year software licensing and services agreement with Microsoft to support Tesco’s head offices, stores, distribution and data centers. Tesco plans to create a new global collaboration platform by deploying SharePoint, Exchange and Lync as part of its strategy to grow internationally, expanding its retail services, including banking, online and mobile.
The company also entered into a $45 million deal with CA Technologies in August. Tesco will use the CA Service Operations Insight tool to manage and monitor its global IT infrastructure, and deploy CA Sysview Performance Management and CA Process Automation to manage IT across Tesco including Tesco Bank, Tesco.com and Tesco Mobile.
Mike McNamara, CIO at Tesco, said, “Our systems infrastructure needs to work for our IT team in order to do their job for our customers, our colleagues and our suppliers.
Grocers such as Winn-Dixie, Tesco and Kroger have also aggressively remodeled stores to create a more pleasant shopping experience, and introduced loyalty programs and customer smart-phone applications that deliver promotions to guests while they shop.
For the details of these deals and other sales trigger events, including specific products and technologies, check out our CRUSH Alert subscription. For more detailed information including org charts, IT landscapes and contacts, visit our eStore to obtain CRUSH Reports on Winn-Dixie, Kroger and Tesco.
Evy De Vellis
SalesQuest
edevellis @ salesquest dot com
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