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Modern and intuitive tools in SPAR's assortment management ensure more efficient retail processes.
From Flash Applications to State-of-the-Art Technology
Thanks to Cloudflight, the SPAR assortment management teams have access to modern and intuitive applications for the management and weekly tendering of the fruit and vegetable assortment offered to customers in all SPAR, EUROSPAR and INTERSPAR stores in Austria.
State-of-the-art tech stack for both applications due to cloud readiness
Short training period, as both applications are intuitive to use
Functions tailored to the new work processes shorten lead times
Cutting-edge software to support well-proven processes
The discontinuation of support for the Adobe Flash Player was the reason the purchasing department of Austria’s largest private employer, the central European retail group SPAR Austria Group, today has two fully renewed applications at its disposal.
Using the “fruit & vegetable tender platform” for weekly tenderings of fruit and vegetables, suppliers submit offers on unit price and quantity for tendered articles, getting accepted or rejected by assortment managers. In the subsequent “Weekly Assortment” application, which is only available internally and used to manage the assortment of the product group fruit and vegetables, employees can update item listings and master data. They can also use the tool to release data for export to connected internal systems, such as SAP, and partners.
The Challenge
State-of-the-art REST interfaces to replace legacy systems
• Resolving mismatches between user requirements and existing functionalities of inventory systems
• Challenging analysis of automated background jobs, legacy systems, and associated interfaces due to the high number of connected systems and interfaces
• Design of state-of-the-art REST interfaces, based on the upstream analysis
• Reduction of long waiting times due to slow loading processes of applications with the goal of being able to design process steps more efficiently
• The replacement of existing, "data intense" user interfaces of both applications with appealing UI designs and intuitive UX
• The introduction of Azure Active Directory for user authentication
• Development of the new applications ready to run in containers
The Solution
Detailed requirements analyses as basis for the best usability
In the course of initial requirements analyses, various alternative solutions were considered, ranging from the development of separate applications to standard software such as SAP. In each case, the choice fell on developing new applications in order to being able to offer better usability and thus shorter process execution times.
Multi-layered application with intuitive UX and appealing UI
Our first subproject: fruit & vegetable tender platform
In joint workshops with experts from the assortment management and with the B2B support at SPAR ICS, the group's internal IT unit, we defined target processes and requirements for the new system. These workshops also helped to identify unspoken assumptions as well as to incorporate and document them. The new system was then developed on the basis of state-of-the-art technologies. In addition, the outdated surface was replaced by a modern and easy to use user interface. Our UI/UX experts conceived designs for both applications in several iterative cycles. For the implementation, we used existing open source UI libraries in order to being able to deliver first results quickly and cost-efficiently.
Assortment Managers create and manage weekly tenders for the Austria-wide delivery of fruit and vegetables
All article and supplier data are identified from various in-house SPAR systems (e.g. SAP, B2B Portal)
Suppliers submit weekly offers on deliverable quantities and unit prices. They can choose between three different languages (DE, EN, IT)
Offers are either accepted or rejected by SPAR assortment managers, and suppliers receive an automatic notification via e-mail.
"Our new application was delivered on time, on budget, and with very good quality. It runs stable and performant and was rated very well by the business."
Erich Vaplon
Senior Product Lead SPAR ICS
We tackled the second subproject, the “weekly assortment” application, similarly. Hence, due to numerous peripheral systems to be connected, we also had to analyse the code of inventory systems. This was necessary in order to identify automated data exports as well as export rules and thus requirements to necessary APIs.
Operating applications in the cloud and using cloud services are a highly relevant topic at SPAR. Thus, the new applications are built in containers, which would make it easy to operate them in the cloud. In addition, the company relies on Azure Active Directory to perform user authentication.
SPAR assortment managers import current tender data from the “fruit & vegetable tender platform” as well as check or add article master data (e.g. country of origin) and listings.
Order quantities per branch establishment are compared with agreed delivery quantities of suppliers by the assortment managers. If necessary, they make corrections to the delivery quantities.
Supplier delivery quotas and listings are exported to SAP for further processing in the purchasing process.
Technologies used
SPAR ICS is the IT unit of the SPAR Austria Group and responsible for all IT matters of the business units Food Retail (SPAR), Sports Retail (Hervis) and Shopping Center (SES) in Austria, Northern Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Romania and Bavaria. Around 600 IT employees develop state-of-the-art IT products and services in order to make the shopping experience for customers and the working environment for employees as pleasant as possible. SPAR ICS provides comprehensive IT solutions for around 3,300 locations and 90,000 employees in eight countries and contributes significantly to the company’s success.
