Wilhering, Austria – The successful collaboration between retail management specialist NTS New Technology Systems and Swisscom celebrates its 10th anniversary. Since 2003 the Swiss telecommunications provider has relied on the Austrian company’s retail software. The long-standing cooperation started in the same year when Swisscom’s franchise stores were equipped with the NTSwincash Retail Suite, the company’s flagship software solution. “Our collaboration with Swisscom is a real success story, especially since it was continuously strengthened over the past ten years. We are very much looking forward to further enhancing this successful cooperation over the coming years,” says Günther Schrammel, CEO at NTS.
In 2005, only two years after equipping their franchise stores with the Austrian software solution, Swisscom decided to introduce NTSwincash also in their own shops. “This surely was a milestone in the cooperation between our two companies,” remembers Schrammel. Two years later, the companies optimized the logistics processes in the Swiss telecommunications provider’s stores by transferring the stock management from SAP to NTSwincash. Thus, NTSwincash has taken up a key role in Swisscom’s inventory management system—both, on a value as well as a quantity basis. Furthermore, the central logistics module as part of the NTSwincash Retail Suite with its integrated and fully automated ordering functionality was introduced in 2007. For this, NTS developed their Web Reservation tool specially for Swisscom.
To better distribute all requests between several servers in order to lighten the individual server load and increase the efficiency of the system, the Swisscom servers were equipped with NTS’s Load Balancing tool. It allows splitting up the overall server load by optimally balancing the available resources. In 2009, the company decided to switch to using the JAVA technology, which paved the road for additional enhancements regarding already existing and new systems.
In 2010, the direct delivery functionality was further improved, new background systems to optimize the customer search (OneCRM) were implemented and an interface to Siebel was created. Moreover, a new and improved employee identification system was deployed. Further enhancements and new features followed in 2011: selling iTunes gift cards, IMEI tracking as well as the implementation of the ROGS system, which makes it possible to perform return transactions for articles purchased using a different sales channel.
Two years later, in 2012, Swisscom first introduced mobile hardware stations which have made the sales process much more dynamic and flexible, using tablet PCs. This makes it possible to perform all sales transactions from virtually everywhere inside a store. And since Swisscom’s web shops have been connected to the NTSwincash system, reservation orders and stock levels are optimally synchronized between stores and the web shop.
“Another innovation is scheduled for 2014. Three Swisscom stores are planned to be equipped with SpeedPOS self-service checkouts that will guide the customer through the entire sales process, using NTSwincash. By means of easyShopping, the customer will be able to independently perform eLoading transactions and buy accessories,” says NTS’s CEO Günther Schrammel about the next highlight in the long-lasting and successful collaboration between the two companies.