Rohan wraps up tech overhaul

Outdoor clothing retailer Rohan has completed an application integration investment understood to be worth up to £100,000 over two years that gives it a clear up-to-the-minute view of its customers and control of stock levels across multiple channels.

Rohan, which operates 32 stores, mail order, online and wholesale businesses, has a high dependency on customer loyalty, due to the specialist nature and premium pricing of its products.

silicon.com Retail & Leisure

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Rohan has integrated its retail management, mail order, CRM and wholesale back office systems using Progress Software. It uses a messaging system from the company called Sonic Enterprise Service Bus as a backbone to provide communications between the systems and its website and EPOS till points at each branch.

Rohan IT and operations director Mark Willison said: "Previously we did batch reporting with one big file and update all the systems from that. Now they email each other. We don't use super-resilient comms, so Sonic saves up messages if a connection is broken and it passes through when the connection is remade."

Willison told silicon.com that Rohan's customers may travel a significant distance to branches to buy its products, because they are not in primary locations. If a product is out of stock, shop staff can now locate it at another branch, assured that stock data is accurate and that it is available to the customer.

The retailer has a policy of recording customer details with every purchase, which means it can now build up a highly detailed, unified profile of its customer base, irrespective of which channel sales are made through.

He said: "This one view is used for customer service in-store and marketing purposes. Rohan has a strong, loyal following. And we've found that customers who we track in this way are worth 49 per cent more in terms of sales. In this way, our customers have become disciples for the brand."