Retail Ventures, Inc.

Improving the Customer Experience with the Sun Java Application Platform Suite

Retail Ventures, Inc. (RVI), a holding company based in Columbus, Ohio, operates off-price department stores in the United States, including Value City Department Stores, Filene's Basement, and DSW shoes and accessories. With more than 340 locations, RVI employs over 20,000 employees. RVI’s mission is to deliver effective and cost-efficient corporate and support services for each of the retail brands, while allowing each brand to focus on merchandising and store operations.

Business Issues

Reduce cost of customer touch points, while improving system performance
Reduce costs by consolidating existing homegrown applications and legacy systems across three business entities
Improve performance and throughput of sales and customer information

Solution

RVI has embraced Java System Application Platform Suite, Java technology, the Solaris Operating System (OS), and Sun Fire V440 and V220 servers to create a high-performance, cost-effective platform for managing the customer experience.

Business Results

Customer loyalty program registration time reduced from 90 days to seconds
Sales data processing time from reduced from weeks to overnight
Supports an increasing number of customer program registrations, with thousands of new enrollments each day
Supports larger, more effective e-marketing campaigns

Products / Solutions

Success at a Glance

Successfully managing the customer experience is at the core of any profitable retail operation. When Retail Ventures, Inc. formed as the holding company for Value City, Filene's Basement, and DSW shoes and accessories, there were real IT challenges from the outset. Each division used a series of point solutions, over a range of hardware, operating system, and applications. In-house solutions were based on custom-built applications, and there were many different processes for managing customer information. Several providers hosted different portions of the Web site, and e-marketing campaigns took a significant time to deploy.

Almost immediately after RVI was established, the company set out to improve the performance, throughput, and cost efficiency of those systems associated with customer touch points. After deciding on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), RVI evaluated solutions from leading IT vendors. Sun products and technology were chosen as the base platform for an SOA.

“ The Java Enterprise System provided a platform for seamlessly integrating all customer touch points, from the point-of-sale terminal to customer services and the Web. Customers are happier, and the cost savings have been significant. ”

— David Yutzy, Manager, Retail Ventures, Inc.

At the core is the Java Enterprise System, a flexible and secure middleware platform with all the tools and functionality needed to rapidly develop, deploy, and manage service-oriented solutions across the value chain – to virtually any device – based on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise (J2EE) technology. After a few months, RVI created a system based on Java technology and Web services, enabling integration among the enterprise applications. The Solaris OS provided the choice, reliability, and performance needed for a rock-solid deployment.

"Using the Java Enterprise System, we were able to standardize on key systems and IT governance principles, and create a single view of the customer," said David Yutzy, Manager Web, Intranet, and CRM systems. "By eliminating separate data silos and improving interoperability, we were able to increase the performance of our customer systems."

RVI was able to consolidate many of the key sales and customer systems using core components of the Java Enterprise System, with dramatic results. Using the Java System Application Server improved the performance of the customer loyalty program. Enrollment activity is now instantly updated in the loyalty program, so customers can view up-to-the-minute status on the Web. Sales data is processed overnight, providing management with better feedback and insight into the effectiveness of current marketing campaigns. Using the Java System Web Server, hosting was brought back in house, resulting in better control over Web sites and the vendor extranet, with a reduction in related costs. E-marketing campaigns with millions of messages now take only hours. This, too, resulted in a savings in operating costs.

The Java Enterprise System delivers the proven reliability, scalability, and integration capabilities required by successful retail operations. This reliable and robust platform helps connect and manage all customer touch points, while reducing cost and improving information throughput for customer and internal applications.