retail technology awards europe 2019: distinctions for several IT solutions from METRO

Category: Best Customer Experience
In this category the EHI distinguishes retailers who employ trendsetting methods and technologies to boost customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. Here METRO was able to score points with the jury with its mobile app METRO Companion. In the future it will enable the company’s wholesale customers to scan a product barcode to see, right on their smartphone, all of the information relevant to that product as well as the individually applicable price. Moreover, restaurateurs can easily generate shopping lists online ahead of time with the app by reading the barcodes of the products they need in their establishments. The list is stored in the app and they can then use it the next time they go shopping. METRO realised the goal of making individual prices visible in collaboration with the Swiss barcode specialist Scandit. Its barcode-scanning technology allows customers not only to read and decode several barcodes at once but also to add further product information to the result of the scan through augmented reality functions. Customers thus not only get their individual price information – they can also have the total value of their shopping basket displayed whenever they wish. Following the successful completion of a pilot phase, the solution is due to be rolled out in several METRO countries in 2019. “With this app we can communicate with and assist our customers on an even more personal level and offer them a better basis for making their purchase decisions,” says Jörg Decker, who is in charge of Mobile Commerce at METRONOM. “In other words, they benefit from a richer and more attractive shopping experience and an improved customer service.” “We are very proud that on the basis of our innovative technology not only our customer METRO was awarded the reta but that we, too, received the Top Supplier Retail award,” adds Samuel Müller, CEO and co-founder of Scandit in Zurich. “This makes us one of the leading providers of barcode-scanning solutions for the retail sector.”

Category: Best Enterprise Solution
This category distinguishes retail corporations that have increased their efficiency by developing and implementing innovative systems and technologies. With this in mind, METRO and the Hamburg company Deepshore are pursuing the goal of replacing conventional archive storage for legally compliant and revision-proof document storage with the blockchain-based storage solution. The jointly developed method allows for raw data from many different systems to be stored and protected against manipulation on a blockchain basis. The system is completely infrastructure-independent and cloud-ready.

The first version of the new cloud storage system is already completed. Among other things, it allows for raw data from a wide variety of systems to be saved without having to rely on classic WORM (write once, read many) storage. Although the solution is operated in parallel with the conventional archive infrastructure for the time being, future savings can already be estimated fairly accurately: up to 50% of storage costs could be eliminated in the future.

“In addition to the cost savings, this solution also allows us to evaluate stored data in full depth over the entire storage period. This also offers our customers many advantages in everyday life, such as the ability to immediately find the right invoices for a specific item without having to look through all the invoices,” says Daniel Köhnen, who is responsible for Financial Customer Management at METRONOM. “With the development of our cloud-ready archive storage, we have not only created a new use case for blockchain, but also a completely new storage system for raw data from different systems. Our collaboration with METRO, one of the most important European retail companies, also shows that this technology has great potential,” says Florian Boldt, Project Manager at Deepshore.

METRO is a leading international wholesale company with food and non-food assortments that specialises on serving the needs of hotels, restaurants and caterers (HoReCa) as well as independent traders. Around the world, METRO has some 24 million customers who can choose whether to shop in 2 - 2 one of the large-format stores, order online and collect their purchases at the store or have them delivered. METRO in addition also supports the competitiveness of entrepreneurs and own businesses with digital solutions and thereby contributes to cultural diversity in retail and hospitality. Sustainability is a key pillar of METRO’s business. METRO has been the sector leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the last four years. The company operates in 35 countries and employs more than 150,000 people worldwide. In financial year 2017/18, METRO generated sales of €36.5 billion. In September 2018 METRO AG initiated the divestment process for the food retail chain Real with its 34,000 employees.

METRO-NOM GmbH is the tech unit of METRO, a leading international wholesale and food specialist company. METRO-NOM provides customised IT services and IT solutions for all METRO countries worldwide. About 2,000 team members are located in Germany and our international locations, offering a wide range of capabilities, such as consulting on business processes, development, implementation and support of business solutions, operating data centers and networks as well as supervision of the IT equipment. More information at www.metronom.com

EHI is a research, training and consultancy institute for the retail industry and its partners. It has some 80 employees. The international encompasses some 800 member companies from the retail business and the consumer goods and capital goods EHI network industries. EHI was founded in 1951. President is Kurt Jox, the Managing Director is Michael Gerling. GS1 Germany, a joint subsidiary of EHI (50%) and Markenverband (the Brand Association, 50%), coordinates the assignment of Global Trading Item Number (GTIN, formerly EAN) in Germany. In cooperation with EHI, Messe Düsseldorf organises EuroShop, the world’s leading capital goods fair for the retail business, and EuroCIS, where the latest products, solutions and trends in IT and security technology are presented as well as C-star for the Asian retail market. More information at www.ehi.org

Scandit enables enterprises and consumers to change the way they interact with everyday objects and augment the physical world with real-time data captured by scanning barcodes and recognizing text, objects, and other visual identifiers using smartphones, tablets, wearables, drones, and robots. Scandit’s mobile data capture platform is built on proprietary computer vision, augmented reality, and machine learning technologies. Companies in industries such as retail, transportation and logistics, manufacturing, and healthcare can use Scandit’s technology to create and power mobile apps for crucial enterprise workflows like mobile point of sale, mobile shopping, self-checkout, inventory management, and proof of delivery. Many of the world’s most innovative and successful companies are benefiting from Scandit’s enterprise-grade mobile data capture platform, including Sephora, Louis Vuitton, DHL, and Levi Strauss & Co. More information at www.scandit.com

Deepshore GmbH, based in Hamburg and Berlin, sees itself as a brain pool and development center for new concepts and solutions in the future segment of distributed networks and applications. With this horizon we pave the way for compliance applications in virtual infrastructures such as the cloud. Through groundbreaking concepts we arrive at practical standards and applications, which we further develop into high-end business solutions together with our strategic partner nextevolution. Deepshore and the Konrad Zuse Center for Information Technology Berlin (Zuse Institute Berlin, ZIB), which focuses on applied mathematics and high-performance computing, maintain a research cooperation whose goal is the development of completely new IT infrastructures in which blockchain and big data technologies are combined for the first time. The cooperation is funded by the Federal Government and is intended to change the future of the IT of large and small companies sustainably. More information can be found at deepshore.de