IBM

Leverage POS data to understand sales patterns, customer preferences and buying patterns to create targeted and profitable promotions. In today’s highly competitive world, retailers struggle to differentiate themselves via their product offerings and by how they promote products to customers across all channels. Smart retailers deploy effective targeted product offerings which can generate significant revenues; poorly chosen ones, though, waste money and opportunity.

Specsavers wanted to capture customer feedback at the point of experience in its retail stores. The survey needed to be automatic, engage with a representative sample of both customers and shop browsers, and deliver incisive analyses and rapid reports. Specsavers contracted IBM Business Partner, Customer Research Technology (CRT) to provide IBM AnyPlace™ Kiosks equipped with CRT’s ViewPoint software. CRT tailored survey screens to capture instant in-store feedback fed over the Internet to CRT headquarters for analysis and reporting.

Ageing servers and an IT environment that had grown organically over time, meant Specialised Travel’s systems were becoming unstable. Regular server reboots and downtime were impacting staff productivity and, ultimately the bottom line. IBM Business Partner, Unilink Systems worked closely with Specialised Travel to design and implement a resilient, consolidated server environment based around IBM BladeCenter® S. Unilink continues to support the solution, which includes high-performing Storage Area Networks (SAN).

HIT decided to adopt a global outsourced solution for data centre managed services, migrating elements of its server infrastructure from Dallas, Texas, to the UK. That meant relocating and upgrading hardware while maintaining 100% performance levels throughout, and calling for the dependable expertise that only IBM could provide. Drawing on IBM’s unique experience and skill sets around the iSeries™ (AS/400™) platform, and aided by close collaboration between IBM and Business Partner Attenda, HIT successfully re-created its Dallas environment in a new UK secure data centre. The project was successfully completed on time and budget, with no disruption to normal business operations.

As one of the fastest growing mail order clothes retailers in the UK, Boden’s rapid expansion was putting pressure on its IT infrastructure. Achieving the required levels of resiliency was becoming expensive and there was little scope for expansion to meet new business opportunities and maintain high levels of customer service. IBM Business Partner Qcubed helped Boden build, test and install a resilient, flexible and scalable IBM infrastructure that is already driving efficiency and customer service benefits and will continue to meet Boden’s needs into the future.