Hannaford's Latest IT Innovations
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Written by Matt Pillar, Editor, Integrated Solutions For Retailers magazine
In 1997, Hannaford Bros., a midsize Northeastern grocery retailer, became the first retailer in the world to implement a store-level ATM WAN (wide area network). Then, adoption of the unproven-in-retail Linux OS to run POS systems at Hannaford gained the company notoriety in 2003. That move solidified the retailer's reputation as a leading-edge technology adopter, and it hasn't done anything since to shake the image. Now, Linux powers Hannaford's POS application, back office systems, store-level file servers, and corporate Web deployment.
While the tale of how Hannaford's CIO Bill Homa took what many saw as a gamble on Linux has been well chronicled, the results of the so-called gamble have not. But if the fact that Hannaford is now two years and more than 70% of the way through its Linux POS installation isn't proof enough that the "gamble" is paying off, perhaps these stats are: in stores that are up and running with the Linux-driven Retalix and Wincor Nixdorf-based POS system, cashier training time has been cut in half. Rings per minute have increased from 3% to 5%. Overall tender time - the time it takes cashiers to process customers' payments - is down 20%. Finally, the company has managed to reduce its register count by one per store without losing any sales efficiency, allocating more precious floor space to high-volume, front-of-store merchandise. "We thought the new system would be so efficient we could get by with fewer lanes, and that's proving to be the case," says Homa. While he isn't ready to place a dollar value on these results, one needn't think too hard to see the ROI benefits of efficiency gains brought about - at least in part - by an open-source OS that's as free to you as it is to a billion-dollar, 1,700-lane grocer like Hannaford.