BGN

No retailer better embodies the innovative approach required for success than Boekhandels Groep Nederland (BGN), a Dutch book retailer that has opened Selexyz, one of the world's first customer-focused, automated retail stores which it calls a 'SmartStore'. Challenge With competition as close as a web browser, BGN realized it needed to leverage new enabling technologies and embrace new processes in order to improve internal operations and enrich the customer experience.

Industry: Retail Region: EMEA Products: EasyAsk Progress OpenEdge Sonic

Solution

Leveraging Progress technologies including Sonic ESB, EasyAsk and OpenEdge, BGN has integrated the business applications via SOA for its new Selexyz "SmartStores", and implemented item-level RFID tagging in order to optimize the supply chain, enhance the customer experience and achieve a competitive advantage.

Results

• Dramatic Improvement of Supply Chain and Enhanced Customer Experience: Leveraging RFID, the company has trimmed manual inventory steps, reduced the opportunities for error, dramatically improved management of its supply chain process and enabled staff and customers easier access to information.
• No Administrative Staff Required: The Progress-based SOA distributed solution requires no in-store administrative staff, a critical component for the future scaling of the system.
• Rapid Implementation Accelerated Time-to-Market: OpenEdge architecture allowed BGN to implement the application in approximately 60% of the time it would have required with other solutions, providing Selexyz with an accelerated time-to-market solution.