How web-based store management helps a small grocery chain compete

At Pro & Son’s, a 7-store supermarket chain that caters to Hispanic shoppers, a new web-based sales management system is enabling headquarters to view hourly reports of sales while saving the cost of updating a legacy enterprise system, CIO Jeff Provenzano tells InternetRetailer.com.

Pro & Son’s, a family-owned chain based in Ontario, CA, with about $150 million in annual sales, is experiencing annual growth of about 10%. But to compete with major supermarket chains like Albertson’s, it decided a year ago to replace a 3-year-old enterprise system to make way for web-based visibility and control of store operations, Provenzano says. The older Unix-based system, which cost $30,000 for back-end software in each store plus about $75,000 for a central corporate server, was unsuited for providing easy central access into store sales data by headquarters executives and traveling merchandise buyers, he adds.

The retailer implemented the Connected Services suit from Store Next Retail Technologies as a hosted application that has monthly subscription costs that are “minuscule” compared to the cost of former system, Provenzano says. “Now we can access sales data any time, anywhere, whether we’re buying, pricing, merchandising or trying to set a store payroll and the amount of customer service we need in the stores,” he says. “Now we feel more comfortable going up against Albertson’s and others.”

Store Next is a joint venture of Retalix USA Inc. and Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc. Pro & Son’s decided to deploy the Connected Services system partly because the retailer had been pleased with its ISS45 POS system, which is made by Retalix and integrates well with the Store Next platform, Provenzano says.

Provenzano says the new system will let him forgo a prior plan to hire five new database managers that would have been needed under the old system, which didn’t offer the same automated integration with POS data.

Eventually, he adds, Pro & Son’s will use the Store Next system for more web-based operations like monitoring cashier activity to control shrinkage, to re-set price/weight formulas on store scales that provide per pound pricing figures, and to better manage shelf space based on sales of individual items, Provenzano says.