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Unleasing the Potential of Retail Through Wireless Technology

In the crazy world of commerce, few businesses are as predictably unpredictable as retail apparel. In this industry, retailers need to understand their customers intimately and make available clothing that matches the fashion of the time every time. Failure to do so is not only a blow to the brand but might severely impact the business' profitability and future viability as excess inventory will have to be sold at scrap value. Nowhere is creativity and innovation more closely intertwined than in the fickle world of fashion.

Such was the challenge for PEPPO Fashions Group, an apparel distributor in Thailand, which manages labels such as Guess, Guess Baby/Kids, Guess Accessory Stores, Mango, Marciano and Castro. It has 12 standalone retail outlets and presence in 50 department store consignments in the country.

Operational nightmare

According to Palakorn Khisalang, IT Manager for the Group, department stores constantly refresh their layouts, and require tenants like PEPPO to move within the building several times a year.

"It's a time-consuming and costly exercise for us to re-architect our IT network after each move," Khisalang says. "Moreover, department stores often run promotional bazaars at central locations, making it difficult for our staff to conduct customer transactions away from their regular in-store counter. This in turn causes discrepancies between the actual transactions conducted and the receipts that were generated."

As the Group expands, managing the IT operations based on a distributed architecture introduced significant network latency and became prohibitively challenging for a small team. This has a negative impact on the efficient collection of accurate sales data and thus hindered management's running crucial sales analysis.

"Our staff needed to be able to get real time updates on stock availability from our back-end warehouses and head office in Bangkok. Although we had moved from a manual system to bar-coding, we still needed a solution that would allow the staff to register inventory while on the move, instead of having to return to a central computer terminal to enter data," Khisalang explains.

Re-architecting IT around the business process

The company evaluated a number of solutions including deploying GPS and ISDN to ensure access to a single repository of data containing retail sales, inventory at the warehouse, and in-transit movement of goods. Each proposal failed on either cost or effectiveness.

One solution that appeared viable, however, was to introduce wireless technology at the retail sites and at the warehouses. The plan is for retail outlets to be equipped with thin client laptops and sales operators with wireless PDAs. This would allow staff to easily move around within the store, and between stores as well.

A centralized delivery mechanism for all applications was also deemed critical for the overall solution to work. The company evaluated a number of technologies and chose the Presentation Server from Citrix.

The Citrix Presentation Server centralizes the delivery of all the client applications the staff need -- such as Microsoft Excel to run sales projections -- without having to physically install these applications onto each device. The staff in turn can access multiple applications from any location.

"We enlisted the help of a Citrix Solution Advisor to implement the Citrix Presentation Server 4, with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 running on two HP ProLiant servers in the firm's data center in Bangkok," says Khisalang.

At the warehouses, the company used SYMBOL handheld devices to conduct inventory checks online via Citrix, with security over the network provided using a VPN combined with a two-factor authentication procedure comprising an RSA SecurID token and password.

Citrix was used to optimize inventory management process. As the access infrastructure foundation, Citrix Presentation Server provides staff with real-time access to a proprietary ERP solution called "PEPPOS" that is customized for retail management via PCs and wirelessly over PDAs. As goods move in and out of the warehouses, the bar code attached to each item is scanned, allowing the staff to track inventory movement. Previously, they had to walk to a LAN terminal to manually enter the data.

The new wireless solution resulted in a more efficient model for keeping track of inventory back at the warehouses, with front-line sales staff now having online access to the most updated information from virtually any machine in a secure manner.

"All of these factors played a strong part in our decision to deploy the Citrix solution to enable a mobile and wireless enterprise, and we believe that this innovative application of technology has enabled us to build a highly adaptable retail model," adds Khisalang.

Part of the initial requirement in the choice of technology was the concern of user training. With only four members in the IT team, PEPPO needed a solution that would require minimal training for everyone involved in the use of the new mobile devices. PEPPO put considerable effort in identifying the right combination of hardware and software to effectively mobilize its staff and ensure safe and efficient access to company information.

PEPPO, however, still faces a number of business process and technical challenges to realize the full potential of wireless technology across the entire operations. From a business perspective, enabling a wireless IT infrastructure isn't immediately possible across all of its locations because of constraints imposed by department stores. Even where possible, it can sometimes take a few months to finalize negotiation with the management.

Benefits gained through centralized delivery model

By centralizing application delivery and management on Citrix servers, and providing virtualized application access on PDAs, PEPPO is able to more easily handle department store counter relocations and periodic sales from central bazaars without having to reinstall point of sale terminals and other equipment, which saves time and money. At the same time, productivity for retail staff has improved because they no longer need to walk to and from fixed terminals to capture the data. Similar productivity improvements have also been observed at warehouses using real-time inventory tracking.

Centralized management has enabled PEPPO to keep IT headcount at four people, despite a significant increase in the number of stores and IT users. What used to take two weeks to install or upgrade software company-wide now takes only one hour.

"With the Citrix Presentation Server solution, we have been able to provide approximately 340 staff at 50 different locations throughout Thailand with secure remote access to critical business applications wirelessly via a 128 kbps ISDN connection from PDAs over a 802.11b/g WLAN interface," beams Khisalang. These applications include Microsoft Office 2003, Oracle Database 10g, and PEPPOS.

Low-bandwidth printing has also been critical to business productivity at both the back-end and retail fronts. Accountants can remotely print the day's transactions from the head office. Warehouse assistants can now generate delivery notes, invoices, consignment notes and price tags wirelessly as well. "We can now literally link data to a retail outlet anywhere in Thailand or the world overnight, unencumbered by the typical technology hurdles that other companies face," adds Khisalang.

Surprisingly, the new solution has resulted in a significant downgrade in the bandwidth requirements of PEPPO. The company uses a 128 Kbps connection at each location back to the Citrix Servers at head office. Conventional technology would have necessitated a 512 Kbps or 1MB bandwidth demand. PEPPO estimates that it was able to save up to $1,600 in bandwidth costs per location alone.

"I recently attended a retail conference in Bangkok, where the focus was on how IT can be used as an enabler for retail enterprises. Some of the technologies mentioned were the ones PEPPO have used several years ago. Many have yet to integrate these with wireless technology. I think companies in the retail industry stand to benefit from these technologies," concludes Khisalang. " Now that we have found the right formula to enable a mobile enterprise, we will continue to establish wireless infrastructure in our new stores as we expand our presence in Thailand."

About the Author

Jose Allan Tan is a technologist-market observer based in Asia. A former marketing director for a storage vendor, he is today director of web strategy and content director for Questex Asia Ltd. He also served as senior industry analyst for Dataquest/Gartner and was at one time an account director for a regional PR agency.

I have Citrix on my computer, although I've never downloaded it?

Is this a microsoft update? I've never used or heard of Citrix until I looked through my Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel. Can anyone give me an explanation, and what it is, by definition? I've checked the company website. I'm still confused.
Edit: Thanks for the answers. But Citrix wasn't included on my computer when I got it. It's a Windows XP my sister made from parts she bought separately, then assembled. When she gave it to me, it was already reformatted. I checked Add/Remove programs then, and I clearly remember that there was no Citrix installed.

Is it okay if I delete it? I'm afraid it might cause harm to the computer itself.

Citrix is a program that allows a remote technician, with your permission, to log in to your computer and work on it.

Lots of corporate IT organizations and computer vendors use it to facilitate remote problem solving from their help desks. I'm guessing that your computer's manufacturer provided it in case you have problems and call their tech support.

Citrix Microsoft Updates
Cisco Partner Update: June 2, 2011

Dynamics Gp Partner Newsflash: Automatic Great Plains Installation and Update

Traditionally Great Plains consultants were installing Microsoft Dynamics GP directly from CD on each workstation, including Terminal or Citrix server.  In large organization IT department has a tendency to control software installation for each user, including ERP and Accounting system centrally.  In Dynamics GP 10.0 and 9.0 you have Installation Package functionality, which allows you to exercise this control.  In this small publication we would like to give you guidelines and ideas on where to get more info:

1.       To create installation package, please insert Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 CD1 (or GP 9.0 CD1, if you are on version 9.0 respectively).  Click on Create Installation Package.  You will be prompted to select Package folder – we recommend you to use UNC path, which is open to each Great Plains user in your organization, then follow simple decision making steps, we would like to dedicate special paragraph to the decisions

2.       Reports file location.  On the Dictionary Location screen you can either choose local path for Reports.Dic or switch to network folder.  Let us stop here for the few seconds.  If you have only couple of Dynamics GP users, then it is not a big deal to copy Reports.dic version, when reports have been modified (normally SOP Blank Invoice form, where you place your company logo, payment remittance information, etc).  In large company, where you have maybe hundred Great Plains users, there is good idea to have all the users to share the same Reports.dic with approved modified reports

3.       Forms.  If you are familiar with Modifier with VBA, you know that you can modify existing GP forms in Modifier by taking off some fields, placing new fields and attaching VBA script to them.  Modifier with VBA allows you to create very simple customization without appealing to your Great Plains reseller to program it for you

4.       OLE Notes.  As you probably already know, OLE notes allow you to attach OLE compliant objects (Excel, Word documents, Pictures, for example).  In order for all the users to be able to open OLE notes, attached by one of the users, you should place OLE notes to the network folder

5.       Letters.  Typical example would be collection letters.  The same idea, consider placing them on the network to share for all the users

6.       Distributing GP Installation.  After you are done with the Installation Package creation, in the installation folder you should see two files: Setup.exe and GreatPlains.msi.  The link to Setup.exe could be emailed to your users, who is chosen for Great Plains installation, and MSI file could be placed into user profile policy or group policy for automatic deployment

7.        Automatic Updates.  Installation Package is created off the original manufactured Great Plains CD1 and 2.  In reality, you have to apply GP Service Packs on the regular base, plus if you are using GP add-ons – you distribute them in the form of Chink files with CNK extension.  Service packs typically include all the earlier SPs and patches.  To publish update for you GP users, you have to first install it on your GP server and then enable for the users in Tools->Setup->System->Manage Automatic Client Updates window.  Update is placed in Syupdate table.  Control is pretty tight – if user doesn’t agree to the update – Great Plains closes and doesn’t allow the user to keep working

About the Author

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum LLC, [email protected] 1-866-528-0577, http://www.albaspectrum.com. Serving ERP and MRP community since 1994, local service in Chicago, Houston, San Diego, Atlanta. Information portal: http://www.pegasplanet.com We serve you USA and Canada nationwide from our Dynamics GP call center: California, Illinois, New York, Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Ontario, Quebec, Washington, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Oregon, New York, New England. International clients welcome from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South Africa, UK, Brazil, Caribbean, Central America

Citrix Microsoft Updates