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SCMP Reporter

GONE may be the days of long queues at midnight at 7-Eleven checkout counters because the sales clerk could not quite get the cash register going.

  Gone may also be the days of 7-Eleven management suffering losses from cash going missing from the tills.

  All this thanks to a new generation of electronic point-of-sales (POS) equipment and software from Italian computer maker Olivetti that is being installed in all 320 7-Eleven Convenience Stores in Hong Kong.

    The US$4.5million project involves Olivetti installing servers and personal computer-based POS scanning equipment to replace traditional cash registers.

  The scanning system will use the company's M4 Modulo PCs as in-store-processors (ISP) and use ORS Vectors as front-counter POS workstations.

  Rick Baily, chief executive of 7-Eleven (HK) Ltd, said: 'The main reasons behind . . . installing such a service is to streamline all the stores' services, gather accurate information, to assist the organisation in improving stock control, analysing selling patterns and increase profitability.'   Planning for the project was well underway to meet the July deadline for having the system up and running, he said.

   All stores that opened since April were equipped with the new system.

  The new system is based on an open multi-user, multi-tasking system, with UNIX running on the ISP PC and MS-DOS running on the POS client, under a client-server co-operative architecture.

   This set-up is expected to simplify operations, improve managing stock, provide useful management information, improved control over stores and English and Chinese handling.

  'We did look into other vendors' products, but they did not meet are requirements,' Mr Bailey said.

  'So, we decided on Olivetti products, and started testing them since December last year. This lasted up to March this year.'   Andrew Tang, managing director of Olivetti (HK) Far East Ltd, said: 'This is a very good project for us in the retail sector, and winning this contract with the largest retail stores made it possible for us to become more competitive and stronger in the industry.

  'We started out retail ventures in Taiwan and with other local entities, like the Hong Kong Government Treasury.'   The ORS Vector comes with the standard POS set of integrated, 54-key keyboard, a magnetic card reader, nine-inch black-and-white monitor and 40 alphanumeric characters.

  It also has a display for customers to read, a three-station integrated impact printer and the standard barcode reader.

  It has a PC set up with a 386 or 486 motherboard with four megabytes of RAM, a 210-MB hard disk, 1.44-MB floppy disk with four RS232 serial ports, two parallel ports, a VGA controller and two AT slots.

   There are also options for a PCMCIA adapter, local-area network (LAN) or modem board, PC keyboard and video and mouse.



Olivetti makes for quicker convenience at 7-Eleven stores