Ahold Delhaize has begun migrating its checkouts in Europe to GK’s software. The GK OmniPOS store solution, based on GK Cloud4Retail, will be rolled out gradually and consistently across the retail group’s all brick-and-mortar banner operations in Europe. This was disclosed by Gerhard van der Bijl, Chief Technology Officer of Ahold Delhaize in Europe, this week in an conversation with The Retail Optimiser alongside the EHI Tech Days in Bonn.
Gerhard van der Bijl said that the roll-out has already begun: 12 stores of the Mega Image and Profi banner operations in Romania are already using the solution from GK. The pressure to modernise is highest in Ahold Delhaize’s Romanian unit, which is why the company has started the migration there.
Step by step, as part of the project known internally as Nexa (Next Gen POS), all of the retail group’s European banner operations, without exception, are to be migrated to GK OmniPOS. This will take some time, but this is not down to GK. Rather, it is due to the fact that a considerable amount of outdated hardware must first be replaced, Gerhard van der Bijl told The Retail Optimiser.
Heterogeneous legacy system landscape
To date, Ahold Delhaize has a very heterogeneous POS software landscape in Europe, which is now to be standardised using GK. In most of Delhaize’s national units, the Storeline solution from Retalix – a provider acquired by NCR – is in use.
In Ahold’s national units, however, the tills are so far predominantly running on the TP.net solution from Diebold Nixdorf, whilst the drugstore operator Etos uses a solution from Cow Hills.
In the US, Ahold Delhaize is upgrading with NCR Voyix
In the US, Ahold Delhaize has begun upgrading its tills with the Voyix Commerce Platform from NCR Voyix. The company has relied on NCR there for some time. The new checkout technology is already available in 100 stores. The grocery retail group intends to continue the roll-out over several years.
Even before the merger with Delhaize ten years ago, Ahold had always maintained separate IT environments in the US and Europe. Even today, the CIOs on the two continents continue to operate independently of one another.
Overall, Ahold Delhaize’s European business, comprising just under 7,900 stores – including the recently acquired Louis Delhaize with its Cora stores – is significantly larger than the group’s US presence, which comprises just over 2,000 stores.
