Harvey Nichols spends £2m on EPoS overhaul

Upmarket department store chain Harvey Nichols is about to undergo a£2 million overhaul of its EPoS and merchandising systems.

As Retail Week went to press, contracts were being inked with Itim for its Chameleon EPoS system and with Grantfort Computer Systems (GCS) for its Merret supply chain solution.

'Harvey Nichols has gone from a single-store mentality to a multiple-store retailer in a short space of time and we haven't really caught up,' said Harvey Nichols head of IT Martin Schofield.

'We needed to upgrade our tills for Chip and PIN. Looking at the cost of that implementation, we decided that there was an opportunity to work on additional functionalities.'

The two solutions will be integrated so the organisation can achieve better visibility in stock positioning. This can be fed back to the till to give customers a clearer idea of what is in stock.

'Improved stock accuracy will improve customer service,' said Schofield. 'I anticipate that this will knock on to sales, but it's not easy to quantify.'

Implementation is expected to start immediately, and Schofield predicts the EPoS solution will be rolled out to 360 tills over five sites in time for Christmas.

The merchandise management functionalities will be live by next April.

Once these systems are bedded in, Schofield will look at more advanced technology, such as store space planning systems, as well as equipping store staff with PDAs so that they can check stock levels remotely.