The Global Forum Achievement Awards, sponsored by SAP, applaud both individuals and retail corporations taking a bold leap to develop applications that raise standards in the industry, leading to clear gains, such as improved customer service, or more effective and efficient business processes. It allows these services to exist outside the constraints of store opening hours and availability of staff. Debenhams has clearly established its Wedding Service as a model for others in the world. The retailer supports its sites with six Compaq 3000-5500 Proliant servers running Microsoft Windows NT and Oracle 8.1i, as well as Blue Martini Customer Interaction System 3.0. Using Web page templates and a comprehensive digital product catalog, ePearle Europe develops content based on local languages and currencies.
Customers gain the convenience of sourcing repeat purchases through the Web.
The retailer developed a product information system consisting of three NT 4.0-based Web servers running Microsoft IIS 4.0 and a SQL 6.5 server, accessible to suppliers via a Web browser. Data is stored in a product information database on a Sun E10000 server. As a result of this system, Daiei has annually saved 150,000 man-hours and 300,000 pieces of paper in creating product information. Global Achievement Award winners were selected by an independent panel of judges who come from different parts of the world and represent different viewpoints of the retail industry. The awards process was audited by Retail Systems Alert editors in the United States.