Luxury lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur is to roll out a system from K3 to support its multichannel operation and improve its product lifecycle management as it expands the business.

Agent Provocateur head of commercial operations Andy Waters told Retail Week: “We want to open 120 stores over the next three years, with the vast majority of these being overseas and a mixture of company-owned and franchise stores. The systems will help move the business to the next level.”

The IT project will be the retailer’s largest to date.

The Microsoft-based system covers EPoS, merchandising, planning and warehousing and has business intelligence tools to help the retailer manage its sales and marketing arms. It will integrate with Agent Provocateur’s existing e-commerce system.

Waters said the planning system will be particularly important as the business grows, because everything is done using manual processes and Excel spreadsheets at present. He explained: “With the expansion we are planning, we need one version of the truth and to bring all our systems together on one platform. We want to remove manual processes and use our data more efficiently.”

Franchisees will also benefit from the technology, which will improve collaboration. Waters said: “We will offer franchisees the opportunity to adopt our EPoS system and they will be able to access a web portal to view stock and place orders.”

K3 will also help support international franchisees.

Agent Provocateur has finished the initial workshops for the implementation and wants to have the finance module up and running for the start of the new financial year.

Most of the other systems are scheduled to be rolled out in the first week of June. This will include introducing the EPoS system to all stores within a week. The planning module should go live about a month after this.