"Tape" automated the process of printing price tags

2022: Automate the printing of price tags for trading rooms

The Lenta retail chain automated the process of printing price tags for trading rooms - instead of several hours, it began to take minutes. This was announced on January 26, 2022 by CSI.

The solution developed by CSI saved the time of store employees - each store saves about an hour of staff time per day. In addition, buyer loyalty is increasing - circulation has decreased due to price differences at cash desks and in trading rooms. Training for new staff in the press process has also been simplified.

Before the solution was implemented, the employee of each store daily generated a report on price changes and uploaded it to the system. The process was carried out in Excel - data on the balances of goods were collected from SAP and formed lists of goods: by sections, groups, changed prices and colors of price tags. As a result of the project, this happens automatically: the price tags are prepared and printed in the interface of the Set Retail cash program.

For the Tapes project, special improvements have been made to the integration of SAP PI and Set Retail 10. All information about changes in the price policy is transferred from SAP to Set Retail - and in the Set interface, the employee sees products that need to be updated with price tags.

The system takes into account balances, groups price tags by prices, product groups and their locations. You can do this by adding filtering and sorting options to Set Retail. You can also set other options, such as not printing price tags on items that are displayed from the assortment, or invoicing the price start time. All this allows you to send price tags for printing in portions without additional complex filtering. When printing, you can use the data on the planning of the trading room obtained from the IKB system - sorting the price tags by departments, shelves and shelves reduces the time they are placed in the hall.

The system itself determines the color of the price tag. Special label templates have been refined and implemented, which can be tied to sorting settings, including the color of the tag. The stores were equipped with thermal printers with a thermocarton of two colors - red and yellow. The store administrator can print in parallel on two printers the price tags formed for each color of the cardboard. If there is only one thermal printer in the store (or the second one fails), Set Retail will consistently warn you to insert the desired color cardboard.

Pre-design survey and preparation of design solutions began in March 2021. In December, Lenta scaled the solution to stores of all formats in all cities of the company's presence. In 2022, work on optimizing the printing of price tags will continue.

2016: Set Retail 10 Implementation

Project development

On September 6, 2016, CSI (formerly Crystal Service) announced the completion of the implementation of the Set Retail 10 cash program in the Lenta^[1] stores: ^[1].

By 2014, the company concluded that it was time to modernize the cash program. The management of the network made a strategic decision on the implementation of the cash system - Set Retail 10.

The main requirement for the system is the ability to process data from hundreds of stores, work around the clock and without failures. It was necessary to ensure the continuity of business processes.

Store "Ribbon," (2014)

Project Progress

The Set Retail 5 development team adapted the solution specifically for the Tapes business processes, especially in the context of the loyalty program, printing price tags and labels. Therefore, when implementing Set Retail 10, you had to transfer all the functionality to the new system. On the other hand, it was important to make the new solution as simple as possible so that users, primarily cashiers, were immediately included in the work and no queues were going to the cash desks. Alexey Onufriev Head of Set Retail, CSI

Implementation should be as simple as possible: with a minimum time for installing the program on the cash desk and quick training of staff. For existing stores in dozens of cities throughout Russia, an implementation methodology was required. You can't take it like that and just close the store for the sake of updating - even a minute simple cash line turns into a loss of money and buyer confidence.

Organizing the transition, Lenta and CSI assembled a team: representatives of all services whose work is related to the front office system participated on the part of Lenta. Lead developers, project managers, service engineers and implementation department joined the contractor.

The team identified requirements, prioritized and scheduled a per-minute migration plan. Accuracy and transparency are very important: it was not a regular update of the current system, but a transition to another technological platform - Set Retail 5 worked on MS-DOS, and Set Retail 10 in Tape operates on Linux.

Conducted a "pilot" implementation in two hypermarkets. So that the work of the stores did not stop for a minute, at the same time no more than half of the cash desks were updated in them. After completing the installation of the program on the cash desk, which took no more than half an hour, an employee was immediately transferred to the updated cash desk and included in the work (a special customer service prepared the cashiers in advance).

Pilot launches were successful, specialists rolled out the implementation procedures and put them on stream. They transferred 10 6-8 stores per week to Set Retail until they completed work on 189 Lenta outlets - not a single store stopped work.

Thanks to careful project planning and close interaction between the Tapes and CSI teams, the migration took place quickly and without failures. We transferred 6-8 stores a week, and each store is 40 cash desks. In general, the project lasted 1.5 years, we met the planned deadlines. This is a great result. Vsevolod Kuzmich, Director of Information Technology of the Lenta Trading Network

Project Outcome

Set Retail 10 technology replaced Set Retail 5 - the program for eight years managed cash lines, trading equipment and the loyalty program in Ribbon. The replacement of the cash system in 189 hypermarkets and a supermarket with more than 5.8 thousand cash centers in 72 cities of Russia went unnoticed for buyers.

Review of Vsevolod Kuzmich, Chief information officer of the Lenta Network, (2016)

The system meets business objectives. Set Retail 10 is easy to replicate, providing conditions for continuous expansion of the network. Before implementation, the independent company Perfomance Lab conducted load testing of Set Retail 10 - the results showed that within the retail network the system will cope with the processing of data from 1 thousand hypermarkets.

Faster service. Cashiers received a more convenient cash program interface.

The company has received modern marketing tools. Coupon programs, bonus points, targeted personal offers for buyers.

There were opportunities to design and print price tags and labels. Set Retail 10 has tools for printing price tags and labels.

2008: Manage Cash Lines with Set Retail 5

Since 2008, the cash lines of the Lenta network have been controlled by the Set Retail 5 front office system - the development of Crystal Service.

Notes