The Evrotek Group (Ukraine) has opened the first four stores in its new Fresh chain. The stores are located in Kerch and Krivoi Rog. LS Retail manages shops on the base of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, implemented by the specialists of Impact-Soft.

Evrotek is behind this huge project and within the next three years, Evrotek plans to open more than 50 stores in the Fresh chain in the Ukraine.

As we reported at the time, in 2007, Impact-soft and Evrotek signed the original contract regarding the automation of the Fresh chain with LS Retail based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Now, less than nine months later, the four new stores are in full operation.

Evrotek is developing the chain on two levels: Department stores called Fresh Market, and the Fresh-Express supermarkets. Both store formats focus on a high level of internal organization and customer service; there are new offers weekly for the customers and the choice of items on sale is very carefully selected.

The first Fresh-store was opened in the city of Kerch 24 October, 2007. At the opening, the customers sampled a wide choice of the goods on offer, and were pleasantly surprised to be welcomed with various celebratory happenings and tastings. From the very start, LS Retail was in action at the front-office. Already 22 February this year, the second shop, in Krivoi Rog, was pened.

As Alexey Diomidov, IT-director of the Evrotek Group notes, IT-deparment employees from Evrotek will take care of all the work involved in setting up and implementing the remaining stores. This is feasible thanks to the training of Evrotek programmers lead by Impact-Soft, and the excellent support of LS Retail.

The structure of the IT system is uniform so that all modules of LS Retail are fine tuned for each workstation in each store, making the implementation of new stores very simple. The whole system in the entire business is controlled directly from the head office of the company. The third store was opened 19 March in Kerch, and then the fourth in Krivoi Rog a month later.

On the POS-terminals in all opened shops there is The LS Retail POS is used on all terminals. It offers an advanced fail-safe functionality of fiscal matters especially developed by Impact Soft for Fresh. It is possible to print documents on the terminals and among other POS functionality is cash management, synchronization of time, reporting for the senior cashier, allowing the tracing of money resources and the monitoring of cash-drawers among other things. It is necessary to note, that some of the above functions are specially adapted for the fiscal registrars in the Ukraine to comply with certain legal requirements.

The LS Retail system also calculates the price of the goods on the basis of various parameters set up according to various criteria, such as the floor price of the supplier, profit margin and the floor price of competitors. This functionality allows automatic calculation, correction and entering of the prepared prices into the system. It is also possible to estimate calculation irregularities from the expected price in order to optimize the process of deciding price which will be also attractive to the buyer and profitable for the Company.

Among additional customization of LS Retail by Impact Soft involves the printing of primary documents in the Ukrainian language and the management of certificates (hygienic, veterinary certificates, certificates of quality and so forth). All additional functionality is developed for Evrotek according to the demand for effective development and network management.

In all the shops, special information centers have been established for answering customer queries, including consultation on goods and prices, return and exchange of the goods and delivery of documents. Besides this the customers can obtain information on each item in the store (including the name and the price) at information booths that are integrated with LS Retail.

In the near future Evrotek plans to introduce the functionality of planning of delivery planning; a functionality for clearing settlement and payment by bank cards; a loyalty scheme (discount cards and others discount programs for regular customers, campaigns and so forth); introduction of CRM-modules; full automation of the modules connected with pricing (introduction of new algorithms for price-calculation, and mechanisms for gathering information about different prices in different regions).

The reporting system (mechanisms of data assembly, modules for report generation) will work on the basis of data received from LS Retail. The system allows optimizing the management of all company business-processes and will lead to an even greater improvement of quality within the entire organization.

The introduction of the system of the management reporting by retail trade will aid processes of internal audit and reduce the element of risk in the company. Last but not least the new retail system will allow the Evrotek Group to conform to the requirements and recommendations of the international ISO-standards (including ISO 9001, ISO 19011).