HomeChoice selects Sybase's Retail Trade System technology for point of sale

Cape Town: South African home shopping giant HomeChoice and long standing customer of Sybase, has extended its use of the Sybase product range with the implementation of Sybase's comprehensive point of sale (POS) management solution Retail Trade System (RTS) at its new retail outlet in the company's head office in Claremont, Cape Town.

HomeChoice, which principally offers home shopping direct to the urban mass market consumer via catalogue mailing and mail agent sales, commands more than 50% of SA's mail order retail market share.

Designed and developed by Sybase Cape Town for multiple retail, wholesale and distribution disciplines, RTS combines full POS functionality with merchandising, debtors, creditors, wholesaling, management reporting and various specialised back office accounting functions.

"RTS is a comprehensive POS management solution that offers powerful branch, region and head office synchronisation (replication) functionality, supports multiple hardware platforms and interfaces with the most widely used financial packages," says Rob Simpson, MD of Sybase's Cape Town office.

The Sybase solution was implemented in just two weeks at HomeChoice as part of a pilot project to test the viability of using a conventional store to complement the company's catalogue-based retail business model.

"Despite POS being completely foreign to our business model, its user-friendly design and its inherent stability made RTS straightforward to introduce to our business processes and fully comprehensive for our needs," says Clive Baynes, IT director at HomeChoice.

Developed in PowerBuilder rapid development tool, RTS is built on the Windows platform, compatible with all major SQL databases and is founded on the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) data model. The software comprises four basic modules: electronic POS, back office store management, centralised warehouse management and head office administration. Each module can function independently or be combined at a number of levels to provide an integrated, customised solution.

Baynes says that while it is too soon to see the business benefits of the RTS solution, the system's rapid implementation and ease of use has enabled the HomeChoice team to focus on adjusting to in-store retail rather than having to worry about the technical aspects of POS.

"If the pilot proves successful and complements our business model, the functionality and scalability of RTS makes the solution ideally suited to our current and future needs," concludes Baynes.