Infosys broadens retail practice with Item Data Integrity solution

Mumbai: Infosys Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: INFY) announced the availability of Item Data Integrity (IDI), at Retail Systems 2004. This new solution enables retail companies and their partners to reduce time-to-market associated with the introduction of new products and promotions, and helps lower item administration costs, reduces operating errors and improves vendor collaboration. As a result, grocers, department stores, apparel designers, speciality retailers and distributors are improving relationships with partners and delivering products more efficiently to their consumers.

The IDI solution from Infosys uses process definition, workflow management, data synchronisation, data translations, data storage and access to address the data redundancies and inaccuracies that retailers face across the enterprise.

Said Terry Morgan, chief information officer and senior vice president of IT, Food Lion, "By performing an internal readiness assessment and process definition, Infosys exposed speed bumps in our previous processes and contributed to the development of a robust roadmap to successfully implement efficient and effective processes moving forward."

The flexible architecture within IDI allows retailers to leverage industry standards (UCCnet) and offers several advantages including flexibility, quicker time-to-market and scalability. The architecture can be deployed on a variety of platforms commonly used by retailers, such as IBM.

According to U B Pravin Rao, senior vice president and head, retail, distribution and consumer packaged goods, "Retailers often find product-data information scattered across various applications in their supply chains. With the launch of IDI, retailers can better manage and process product data, which leads to better performance and improved time-to-market, all critical for today's competitive retail industry."

The launch of IDI complements Infosys' portfolio of retail-specific solutions, including its solution for RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) adoption and lead time optimisation (LTO) Infosys introduced its solution for RFID adoption to enable customers to harness supply chain information, including advanced product tracking and greater inventory control. LTO enables retailers to significantly reduce order-to-delivery times, mark-downs and stock outs by addressing demand uncertainty within flexible supply plans.