FERONA
Electrical & Hardware storeProdukty:
The story of the company
Customer: Ferona, a.s.
Ferona has been selling metallurgical materials on the Czech and Slovak market for almost 200 years. In 1829, L. G. Bondy founded a hardware wholesale in Prague, which in 1919 became a joint stock company called FERRA a. s. Despite various periods of transformations and mergers with other trading companies, the company "Ferona, národní podnik, Praha" was established in 1972. In mid-1989, Ferona became a state-owned enterprise. At the beginning of the 1990s, the joint-stock company Ferona was established, whose core business is wholesale trade focused on the purchase, storage, processing and sale of metallurgical products, metallurgical secondary products, non-ferrous metals and related hardware products. As part of the privatization process, Ferona, a.s. became a private company in 1995. The retail outlets form an integral part of Ferona a.s.'s portfolio of sales channels and are primarily focused on the sale of metallurgical materials and hardware products to retail customers.
- Stores
- 4
- Year of realisation
- 2007
- Years of cooperation
- 16
- Establishment of the company
- 2001
The biggest advantages of WinShop solution
Ferona a.s., through the mouth of its employees, appreciates on the business, warehouse and POS system WinShop SQL above all, the complex retail terminal with easy and intuitive operation and a multitude of integrated functions, innovative solutions of bundled checkouts ensuring safe sale of more expensive products and more complex orders executed at multiple workplaces of the retail store. Operations staff highlight first and foremost the trouble-free and reliable nature of the entire solution and, for example, the ON-LINE interfacing with scales that speeds up the sale of fasteners. The accounting department was pleased to note that the collection of accounting data and its processing directly in the company-wide accounting system has been greatly simplified, and management appreciates the set of statistical outputs needed for operational decision-making.
Up-to-date information on stock availability
Stable sales system with server failure protection
Customer system
Promotions and discounts system
Sales support to wholesale customers
Communication of POS terminals with checkweighers
Package checkouts for order processing from multiple store centres
Connection to the central accounting system
Implementation story
The need to implement a modern information system at individual retail outlets, which handles all business processes efficiently and in real time, while communicating with the central ERP system BPCS, led the company management to announce a tender for a supplier of a retail POS system. On the basis of meeting all the requirements, WinShop was announced the winner of the tender in April 2006. Shortly after the tender results were announced, an implementation group was established, consisting of expert staff from Ferona a.s. and WinShop, which developed the basic document for the pre-implementation phase of the project. This document, once agreed by both parties, formed the pillar of the implementation itself and its individual parts represented long hours of consultation of the client's requirements and solution proposals by WinShop staff. The agreed document also included the contractor's commitment to transfer the complete data from the existing information system for the purpose of retrospective analyses and, of course, as an initial state for the start of work in the new system. After completing the testing of the proposed solution in "laboratory conditions", the implementation group proceeded to propose a start date for the pilot project. The largest retail outlet of Ferona a.s. in Holešovice with 16 front office terminals and 15 back office workstations was selected as the pilot project. It is evident that the members of the implementation group nominated by the client had full confidence in the proposed solution and the implementation ability of the supplier, according to their previous cooperation with the expert consultants of WinShop software s.r.o. WinShop did not want to disappoint this trust and prepared thoroughly for the start of the pilot project.
WinShop SQL
The actual implementation of the pilot project was scheduled for the beginning of October 2007. Due to the requirement of the shortest possible sales downtime, WinShop had about 3 working days to prepare and launch the shop, in which it had to convert all data from the existing system / about 1 500 000 records /, convert the initial states and all dials, install the POS terminals and train the operators. Thanks to the excellent cooperation with the staff of the Holešovice site and the head office, the opening date was met. Based on the results of the pilot project, the implementation group worked out the implementation procedure for the other retail outlets. The date for the start of the implementation was set for the first working day of December 2007. With all the effort and setting the following working days until late at night, the last store was successfully launched on 5 December 2007. Due to the exhaustion of all participating implementers, there was no symbolic token toast. However, we believe that everyone deserved a glass of champagne. In the following month, the results of the live operation were consulted and partial adjustments to the setup were made. This phase ended with the opening of the communication interface between WinShop SQL system and BPCS IS. As all tests were completed according to the client's requirements, the implementation was formally completed.
