House of Fraser synchronises supplier data

Department store chain House of Fraser has signed up to the Inovis Data Synchronisation service in the hope of reducing the time to upload information on suppliers' products into its core merchandising system by 50 per cent.

silicon.com Retail & Leisure

Get the latest retail and leisure news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the R&L newsletter today!

The retailer will encourage up to 850 suppliers to come on board, affecting 100,000 stock keeping units. Supply chain into the retailer's concessions will not be included.

The web-based platform is widely used in the US but House of Fraser is one of the first in the UK to adopt it. It is hoped that, as a result, other UK retailers will follow suit.

Suppliers feed information about their products into the platform and any changes to product data are automatically flagged to House of Fraser. This should speed up the process of aligning the retailer's supply chain systems with its suppliers and therefore cut down on wrongly delivered stock, according to House of Fraser head of IT solutions Mike Hiscock.

He said: "This service should have a dramatic impact on the accuracy of our stock data and smooth the processes between us and our suppliers."

Hiscock hopes up to 300 suppliers will sign up to the platform by the end of 2009. A future development may be the integration of the platform more directly into House of Fraser's systems. From the outset, the platform displays the data on a web user interface, which then has to be manually transferred onto the retailer's stock system.

As consumer spending starts to slow and the competition to keep customer satisfaction increases, stock availability will become a critical factor for all retailers.

In a statement, House of Fraser CEO John King said: "The need to streamline electronic communication with all our suppliers has been clear for some time. By synchronising product data and images we can increase communication efficiency and decrease errors. This will lead to improved sales and by avoiding costly mistakes for both House of Fraser and for our suppliers."