Retail Solutions - Tesco announces operators for roll-out of Clubcard overseas

Tesco announced the suppliers for its overseas Clubcard loyalty scheme operations at this year's Retail Solutions show, held last week in Birmingham.

The retailer already has independent loyalty schemes operating in countries such as Thailand, but the eastern Europe and Southeast Asia rollout is the first time that Clubcard will be offered to customers outside the UK.

Tesco's technology supplier Fujitsu implemented a bespoke solution for the store, which standardises data capture for each country, although data will not be distributed centrally from a global hub.

The Fujitsu solution supports the .Net platform and is supplied as a set of modules that are integrated in situ. Called the Real Time Loyalty Solution Kit, the system comes 80 per cent ready made.

'We needed a bespoke system because we couldn't find an off-the-shelf solution that was flexible enough,' explained Tesco project manager Neil Petree.

'It wasn't suitable to put a mainframe in every country when there might only be a small number of stores at the moment. We needed to make it standards-based and we needed good support.'

About 10 million people use their Clubcard each quarter and, according to Petree, it expects 50 per cent of its sales space to be located overseas.

In the eight years since Clubcard has been running, more than£1 billion has been given back to customers in rewards.

Commenting on the rollout, Fujitsu Consulting strategy development director Ray McCann said: 'Most retailers today just use store cards to award points or provide credit. We believe the next generation of loyalty schemes will be aimed more at gathering and using customer information to increase sales. Fujitsu's Real-time Loyalty Solution Kit provides companies such as Tesco with a fast but flexible way to implement such schemes.'