The UK retail giant is among the winners announced at EuroShop's retail technology awards

The UK retail giant is among the winners announced at EuroShop's retail technology awards

Tesco and shoe brand FLY London were among the winners announced at the European retail technology (reta) awards this week.

On Sunday, as part of EuroShop - the world's largest retail capital goods fair - EHI announced the winners of its fourth reta awards at a festive evening event in the “Club” of the Capitol Theatre in Düsseldorf.

Due to unprecedented numbers of entries, three winners were chosen in each of the three award categories: Best Customer Experience, Best Instore Solution and Best Enterprise Solution.

Best Enterprise Solution

Tesco, Edeka and Kyaia were named as winners in the category Best Enterprise Solution.

Tesco won its a prize for the use of the mobile Apple iPad app as a mobile business intelligence (BI) solution. With the mobile device, key performance indicator information about the shops can be called up at any time on different dashboards.

German grocery giant Edeka received an award for its “Market of the future,” which reengineered it retail processes to show innovative ways of operating in more cost-effective and flexible ways, while still increasing customer satisfaction.

FLY London, the fashion footwear brand from Kyaia won for a project that demonstrates the advantages of using RFID technology through the entire value chain, from the production stage and the supply chain to the retail outlets. The same technology is used to as the basis for innovative interactive customer experiences in-store, as well as integration with electronic article surveillance (EAS) for added security.

Best Customer Experience

The winners in this category are Gewandhaus Hugo Gruber, Red Market and Parfümerie Douglas.

The Bavarian fashion store Gewandhaus Gruber, which operates nine shops in the vicinity of Munich, was awarded a prize for its virtual customer loyalty system. Instead of falling back on the usual loyalty cards, Gruber innovated using biometrics: after a one-off registration using their identity card, bank card and personal fingerprint, the customers can pay at all Gruber checkouts by simply placing their finger on a scanner. In doing so they also collect additional bonus points.

The Red Market discount brand of the Belgian food retail chain Delhaize received its prize for an innovative all self-scanning shopping concept. Using a handheld terminal, the customers scan product barcodes, before adding them to their basket. At the checkout only the terminal is handed to the cashier to complete payment - the customer need not unpack their baskets.

Parfümerie Douglas won an award for its interactive store concept for young customers, using new point-of-sale (PoS) technologies. On touchscreen terminals, customers can be given perfume or make-up recommendations. Paper strips which are first placed on the forehead and then under a scanner become skin type consultants. These personal test results and pictures can directly be posted on Facebook.

Best Instore Solution

Unicoop Firenze, Euronics XXL Heller and the Poco-Domäne interior decoration stores were awarded a prize in the instore category this year.

Unicoop Firenze, with 102 shops in Tuscany and 14 more in Rome making it the largest co-op in Italy, uses a uniform branch platform in all its stores with which the various applications in the outlet can be operated through web services. By using service oriented architecture (SOA) and ARTS standards, two separate self-scanning and scales solutions have been connected to the system. In addition, queue management and mobile shopping applications can also simply be tied in.

The specialised Radio Heller, Euronics XXL store in Cham was awarded a prize for its gender and age-related customer frequency measurement system. The technology has been used to measure the customer flows at the entrance and the exit of the shop. The information gathered is then analysed and compared to the data in the retailer's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, making it possible to optimise staff deployment planning and to target product ranges more accurately to various customer groups, as well as enabling a better evaluation of promotional activities.

In its 87 German shops, Poco Domäne offers a wide range of goods in the field of interior decoration and renovation. This retailer won its particular award for the implementation of a cash management solution that automates the entire cash handling at the PoS. After goods have been scanned by the cashier, the system allows the customers to carry out the payment and change process themselves. In addition, the system also offers a method of transporting the monies received to the cash office in this way, a closed-loop cash system aghast been created within the outlet.

The awards were handed out by reta partner IBM, as well as the members of the jury Winfried Lambertz from the EHI, and Miya Knights, editor of Retail Technology magazine.