BT puts Fat Face on ‘cloud 6.3’ with multichannel point of sale

BT Delivers Solution in Nine Months to Support Retailer’s Record Double Digit Sales Growth

BT Expedite, BT’s multichannel retail specialist business, has successfully completed the rollout of a new cloud-based version of its Store 6.3 Point of Sale (POS) solution for Fat Face, the active lifestyle clothing and accessories retailer.

The solution was rolled out across all 206 of Fat Face’s stores in time to support a record Christmas sales peak for the retailer, with double digit sales growth. From design to completion, the project took a record nine months – typically similar scale bespoke deployments can take up to 18 months.

Fat Face is using BT Expedite’s Multichannel Connected Retailer Suite comprising Store 6.3 POS, Audit and Operations Management and Customer Relationship Management. The new system covers 420 tills at 206 stores in the UK, Ireland and Jersey. This is hosted on BT Global Services’ On Demand Compute cloud platform so it can grow and shrink with Fat Face’s needs but only charges for the processing power that is actually used. They are also using BT’s managed payment service specifically designed to meet the new Payment Card Industry Security Standard (PCI DSS) and take advantage of the evolving contactless technology.
Leon Shepherd, Business Change & IT Director at Fat Face, said: “Fat Face needed to improve its POS systems as the current solution was struggling to cope with our rapid growth and multichannel plans.

“We had an extremely challenging objective to deliver a fully functional multichannel system in 9 months with no margin for error as the system had to be in prior to our peak. To achieve this took a huge amount of commitment from both BT Expedite and ourselves but the end result has been fantastic with the system proving fully resilient throughout our biggest ever trading period and driving significant growth in our multichannel areas. We’re enjoying working with BT Expedite and look forward to developing the relationship.”

Josh Pert, CEO at BT Expedite, said: “We are delighted that our people and systems were chosen by Fat Face as partners to support the ambitions of their business. On demand multichannel POS is the future as it reduces the delivery time and costs for retailers and offers an affordable platform for growth businesses.”

Notes to editors

About Fat Face
Fat Face is an active lifestyle brand that sells kit for men, women and kids as well as footwear, jewellery, and accessories. It is a multi-channel brand with a network of 186 stores, mail order catalogues, a fully interactive website and a growing wholesale operation.
Fat Face was acquired by Bridgepoint in May 2007.
For more information, visit www.fatface.com

About BT Expedite
BT Expedite is the retail specialist division within BT. It provides solutions to enable multichannel retailers to compete effectively. BT Expedite spans every area of retailing; planning, sourcing, merchandising, store, sales analytics, CRM, plus network infrastructure, hardware and professional services.
BT Expedite’s multichannel capability was reinforced by the acquisition of Fresca in 2008. BT Fresca creates transactional web stores for leading fashion and lifestyle brands in the UK and across the globe.
Customers include: Aurora Fashions (Coast, Oasis & Warehouse), Mothercare, New Look, Pets at Home, Primark, Thomas Pink and WHSmith
For more information, visit www.btexpedite.com