Big Bazar has more time for the customer

With 130 stores across the Netherlands, Big Bazar has become a well-known national household retailer offering a wide range of drugstore and household items, toys, and sweets. To ensure smooth store deliveries and sales, a well-functioning IT environment is vital to daily business operations.

It might not be something the average customer thinks about when they pick up a product from the shelf to pay for it at the checkout. But during such a transaction, multiple applications are working together to exchange data. How do you, as a retailer, ensure these applications are properly connected? For example, to enter information in just one application and then reuse it in multiple applications? Or to retrieve management information stored in multiple systems?

A commonly used method for this is an Enterprise Service Bus, an intermediate layer that allows all applications to communicate logically with each other behind the scenes.

What does it take to connect business-critical applications via a Service Bus? And how did the implementation go at Big Bazar? Evert Zaal, IT manager at Big Bazar, and Jeroen de Ruiter, project leader at Agerion, give us a glimpse behind the scenes.

Jeroen: “The Service Bus is indispensable within a retail organization like Big Bazar. The new Service Bus is the communication tool between the ERP system, the POS system, inventory management, and the logistics service provider. With the Service Bus, data transactions between the two systems are efficient, consistent, and fast, and all data is stored securely. It is a true hub of the web for purchasing, logistics, inventory management, and sales.

In practice, this means the following: Suppose, as a customer, I see that a certain product is out of stock. The sales associate scans the barcode of the product in question and enters the required quantity in the POS system. The Service Bus retrieves the order from the POS and forwards it to the purchasing application. All orders are collected there and then forwarded to the warehouse. On the next delivery day, the products are delivered to the relevant stores, and the product is back in the store.”

Evert: “If our business processes change and existing applications no longer connect, we can selectively disconnect these applications and connect others to the Service Bus. This will only become more common in the future. The value of such a system is that you can increasingly connect more to it. We enter data in a single location in the ERP system. This means the data in the cash register is always up-to-date with the latest promotions and discounts, and the shelf labels in the store display current prices. When a customer pays at the checkout, there is no more arguing about what is on the shelf label and the price displayed at the cash register.

In short, the Service Bus keeps our application landscape organized and future-proof without relying on knowledge in people's minds.”

Jeroen: “To set up and configure the new Service Bus with the supplier, Big Bazar needed a project manager to oversee the project. Big Bazar was already working with Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations, which, like the Azure Service Bus, is a Microsoft service. At Agerion, we have extensive experience with these applications and work for various retailers.”

Evert: “We are a small organization and lack the capacity to manage such projects effectively. Moreover, the biggest change was moving to the cloud, which is quite complex. It is best to engage experienced people for this. Agerion is well-versed in the retail sector and understands the benefits of an IT solution like this within a business model like ours. Previous projects involving streamlining business processes have also been completed satisfactorily under their experienced guidance.”

Jeroen: "What struck me while managing this project is that everyone at Big Bazar is incredibly driven and eager to do their best for the company. This creates a great working atmosphere. Even though some departments are under considerable pressure, everyone within the organization remains motivated."

How do you stay one step ahead of other retailers?

Evert: “It is important to note that we have opted for Microsoft cloud-based applications. This makes managing the Service Bus much simpler. Now, almost only message traffic needs to be monitored, and much less the underlying infrastructure.

Working in the cloud does require a different mindset. You have to adapt to cloud updates. These are continuous, which means you have to adapt your internal IT processes accordingly. The biggest advantage of working in the cloud is that Big Bazar is future-proof when it comes to our IT landscape. It's always up-to-date, so Big Bazar never lags behind.

This modernization means our store employees have more time for our customers. Previously, data was sometimes inaccurate or there were technical glitches. It always took a lot of time to resolve these issues. And while the store manager used to walk the shelves twice a week to count shelves, that's no longer necessary. He now has more time to design the store attractively for visitors.” In short, with this new IT landscape we have more time for the customer.”