With partner Kewill, Inovis provides operational efficiencies for the UK's No.1 retailer of many international brands
New York — January 19, 2006 — The British department store Debenhams announced this week that it has selected Inovis Catalogue to achieve operational improvements through global data synchronization (GDS). Inovis Catalogue is a North American retail industry centralized repository of product information with over 100 million unique items.
Debenhams is the UK's No.1 retailer of many international brands, including Clarins and Yves Saint Laurent; Denby, Meyer, Portmerion and Le Creuset; Ben Sherman; and Playtex and Lepel. The company has 116 stores in the UK and Ireland, as well as 15 overseas franchise stores, employing over 19,000 people and visited by 15.8 million customers each year.
Debenhams selected Inovis Catalogue to electronically synchronize product data, as well as improve communications with its branded trading partners.
"We chose to partner with Inovis and Kewill because of their experience supporting the retail industry's largest general merchandise and apparel trading communities," said Steve Kircher, director of information services at Debenhams. "With Inovis Catalogue, we look forward to working with our trading partners to more effectively and accurately synchronize product information and ultimately drive increased sales and reduce time-to-market."
Sean Feeney, president and CEO of Inovis, commented, that in today's increasingly competitive retail environment, ensuring accurate product information is crucial for industry leaders like Debenhams. "Our retail expertise, solutions and support services will enable Debenhams to communicate with its trading partners and maintain the high standard of product information accuracy that is essential to gaining market edge."
In May of this year, Inovis announced a partnership with Kewill Systems Plc to resell and support Inovis Catalogue for GDS in the UK and across Europe. The partnership extended Kewill's supply chain offering in its focus market of retail with the ability to provide a GDS solution.
Additional Articles of Interest
- — For a look at how another company, the Canadian firm McCain Foods, is overcoming data synchronization challenges in its supply and demand chain, see the article "Building a 'Trusted Source'" in the April/May 2004 issue of Supply & Demand Chain Executive
