SPAR Austria/ASPIAG, Austria
SPAR Austria empowers local store managers with Caché-based ERP system
Salzburg-based SPAR Austria, a member of SPAR, the world’s largest food retailer consortium, is a 4 billion euro company with over 1,300 outlets within Austria. They wanted an end-to-end enterprise resource planning (ERP) and point-of-sale (POS) system to help managers of local stores control their inventory. After carefully researching their options, SPAR Austria decided to implement IMAge (Integrated Management Application for Grocery Enterprises), a solution based on the InterSystems Caché object database. IMAge was originally developed by Austria SPAR International AG (ASPIAG), SPAR Austrias’s international subsidiary, for the quickly growing Eastern European markets.
“In the past, stores occasionally ran short of goods because the store managers
had to rely on inaccurate data calculated by the central office. Now, managers
are able to control the movement of goods, the inventory in their stores, and
pending deliveries,” says Günther Kilian, process manager at SPAR Austria.
“Plus, the IMAge system is easy to use. The tool set has been matched perfectly
with the requirements of employees.”
“Ease-of-use was an important consideration when we developed IMAge,” says Gerd Karnitschnig, managing director of SPAR IGT Slovenia and IT coordinator at ASPIAG. “We used Caché Server Pages technology to create a common user interface for the centralized and local portions of the application. From the user’s perspective, there is only one system to learn. That gives us a competitive edge.”
“We are very happy with Caché’s rapid Web development, scalability, and high performance.”
--Gerd Karnitschnig
IT Coordinator
ASPIAG
Performance and scalability are also very important as the IMAge system continues to be rolled out. SPAR stores range from convenience stores, to specialty gourmet food shops, to supermarkets, to huge “hypermarkets” that sell much more than just groceries. By the end of 2010, IMage will be in place at more than 1,400 SPAR stores, including 50 hypermarkets.
According to Karnitschnig, there are a number of improvements and additions being developed for the IMAge solution, some of which will use InterSystems Zen™ technology. “We are very happy with Caché’s rapid Web development, scalability, and high performance,” he says.
