• silicon.com
• Management
• CIO Insights

By Julian Goldsmith, 13 November 2007 13:52

NEWS

The new team in charge of retail software provider Torex Retail has been reassuring customers about its product plans - and looking at areas of possible expansion, including business intelligence.

When private investment company Cerberus bought Torex in June this year it flew in its own management team. Since then new president and COO Graham Cooksley has conducted a review of the 90 property leases it holds and has kicked off a programme to fully integrate the group of acquired companies that now make it up. Some smaller offices will go and it will rationalise some back-office functions which have, up to now, been duplicated.

Cooksley said: "When I came in, I expected the company to be more integrated. What I found was a company of disparate businesses. Different product sets were being sold in different parts of the world. We had 14 accounting systems. That made the company difficult to run."

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The company has a considerable customer base which in the UK includes grocers such as Sainsbury's and Tesco, mixed merchandisers such as Harrods, House of Fraser and WHSmith, down to a number of independent retailers. There are equally high profile customers in its hospitality and petroleum and convenience divisions.

It has been following an aggressive acquisition strategy for some years, based on acquiring products in the Epos and retail back-end systems space.

Cooksley is rationalising the locations, establishing a worldwide operations team and reducing the number of spares warehouses in Europe from 13 to two. Alongside this there has been a programme of re-education for the staff. The new management team has set up 60 meetings with employees to make them aware of the new coherent corporate culture.

He said: "We have outstanding people but they worked hard on very focused areas, not really understanding how their bit contributed to the company as a whole. Morale was not wonderful. They have been through difficulties but morale is improving."

He explained the staff will be going through a training programme, so the management can "impose its DNA" on the organisation. To date, 10 per cent of staff have completed this training.

Perhaps more important was the task of making sure the customers didn't start looking at rival suppliers. For a privately owned company, Torex adopted an unusually open attitude about giving its customers access to financial data.

Cooksley told silicon.com that customers were nervous about what was going to happen to Torex.

He said: "There are three things customers want to hear from us. They want to know that we will continue to support the products they are using. They want to know that the company has financial viability. They want to know that we will continue to develop and move forward with their changing needs."

Torex will not be "sunsetting" any of its product set as a result of the change in ownership, Cooksley said. Under the new management, the company will continue to add to that product set either by acquisition or development. He sees the most likely areas as business intelligence and workforce management. Torex will lose the Retail part of its logo to reflect its further moves into the leisure and petrol markets.

So Torex is singing a new tune but are its customers joining in? David Charman is the managing director of petrol station business Parkfoot Garage which has two locations in Kent. He has used a Torex-owned POS product for nine years, even before it was acquired into the supplier's product set.

His business, which has a revenue of £10m per year, gets revenues from convenience store sales and petrol sales, which means his POS system is critical to the running of the business.

Charman said: "When you see problems in your supplier, even at such a high level, you're going to be concerned about the direction the company might take."

He said: "This is the first time things have been done differently. We were given the opportunity to meet the people responsible for running the company and I find that quite refreshing."

Charman told silicon.com he is confident the product he uses will not be left to stand still and grow obsolete.

He said: "It's early days but Torex have provided us with a roadmap that suggests the products will move forward and I can't ask for much more than that."