J Sainsbury has chosen SAP Retail as new merchandise management system for its Sainsbury’s stores. With this, the second largest British retail company is parting with its Retek system after 22 years. The system was acquired by the US software giant Oracle shortly after it was introduced at Sainsbury’s in 2005.
At that time, Sainsbury’s was the first major grocery retailer to implement Retek. Shortly after Oracle acquired the solution, British market leader Tesco also opted for Oracle Retek.
Sainsbury’s now wants to implement SAP Retail as a cloud solution and has signed large-scale contracts not only with SAP, but also with consulting giant Accenture as well as with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The mammoth IT project is expected to take several years.
The choice of Accenture comes as a surprise
Industry experts are surprised that consulting giant Accenture, is back on board. In 2004, Accenture was held responsible by Sainsbury’s for the resounding failure of the project, which at the time was considered the largest IT outsourcing project in European retail. At an annual results press conference in October 2004, Justin King, who had just taken over as Sainsbury’s CEO, blamed the outsourcing of large parts of the IT team to Accenture and the consulting firm’s work for the lack of product availability and the company’s declining market share.
Justin King, who was CEO of J Sainsbury until 2014, described the transfer of IT expertise to Accenture as a serious mistake. Just two years later, the outsourcing contract with Accenture was reversed, with assets, contracts with third parties and around 470 employees transferred back to Sainsbury’s.
Tailor-made customer loyalty
Sainsbury’s current transformation programme is designed to get the company in shape for its ‘Next Level’ strategy. This strategy aims to win back market share in the grocery business, strengthen customer loyalty through an improved loyalty platform and increase the efficiency of its stores by investing in technology. The retailer had committed to its investors to save one billion British Pounds in costs by March 2027 and to significantly increase its free cash flow.
Sainsbury’s plans to significantly improve promotion management with the comprehensive renewal of its business systems. This will enable Sainsbury’s to manage products more flexibly as part of promotions and to offer customers a more personalised shopping experience. The project would not only benefit its customers, but would also simplify communication between employees and suppliers, thus increasing efficiency. “We are delighted to be working with an excellent partner network of SAP, Accenture and AWS to completely revolutionise our retail systems, which are at the heart of our business operations,” explains Rhian Bartlett, Chief Food Commercial Officer at Sainsbury’s.
New contracts also with NCR Voyix
Sainsbury’s has also recently decided to expand its collaboration with NCR Voyix. The Retail Optimiser reported. In 2002, the British retail company had introduced the Israeli-based POS software solution Retalix together with the merchandise management system Retek. NCR had acquired Retalix in 2013.
Last month, Sainsbury’s signed an addendum to its 20-year relationship with the POS hardware and software provider. Sainsbury’s will upgrade 22,500 checkouts in its grocery, convenience and petrol stores with NCR Voyix Commerce platform and the latest generation of point-of-sale solutions.
