"It's a milestone project because of the sheer size of it," says Hendrik Bredenkamp, MD of Skydirect, an XON company and exclusive African Pricer partner. "The ESL industry is relatively young but this deal, worth more than SEK 300 million (R365.4 million) demonstrates that even the largest international retail chains is taking the solution seriously, which supports the decisions made by so many local retailers."
Bredenkamp adds that the ESL market in South Africa is becoming entrenched with rollouts at several retailers including Spar and that he has established operations in several African countries and is exploring opportunities in the Indian Ocean islands. Skydirect has Pricer ESL installed at more than 240 stores in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zimbabwe and includes some of the largest and most recognised brands on the continent.
The latest French implementation is due to be rolled out in Q3, 2012, and finalised within five years. The customer also intends to deploy Pricer ESL in its chains in other parts of the world, such as South America and Thailand.
"The customer has been using our solution since 2004 and was looking for a modern system that would be the basis for implementing pricing strategies as well as bringing operational efficiency to the shop floor," says Fredrik Berglund, CEO of Pricer. "The retailer did full scale pilot installations with all the leading ESL manufacturers and we are proud to note that the customer experienced that our solution best responded to its needs."
The company provides the ESL platform, solutions and services for intelligently communicating, managing, and optimising price and product information on the retail floor. The platform is based on a two-way communication protocol to ensure a complete traceability and effective management of resources. The system significantly improves consumer benefit and store productivity by simplifying work in the store.
The company was founded in 1991 in Uppsala, Sweden and has installations in close to 50 countries with the largest ESL world market share. Customers include many of the world's top retailers and some of the foremost retail chains in Europe, Japan and the USA. In co-operation with qualified partners, Pricer offers a totally integrated solution together with supplementary products, applications and services.
For more information, go to www.pricer.com.
