From November 2007

By Liz Parks

Supermercados Peruanos, the second-largest food retailer in Peru, was being visionary when it opted to implement a highly-integrated IP communications network in 2005.

Operator of more than 40 supermarkets, Supermercados Peruanos was using several different types of telephone and data services across its enterprise; management wanted to consolidate those systems by implementing a more cost effective Internet Protocol (IP) network.

After researching various technology providers, it chose a product portfolio from Ottawa-based Mitel to serve as the cornerstone of the new system.

Enrique Tomas, IT telecommunications manager for Supermercados Peruanos, says Mitel “has studied the particular issues faced by retailers and they were willing to adapt their solutions to fit our needs, helping us achieve our goals.

“Their solutions are easy to manage and use,” he says. “Plus, we can expand the system and its applications as we grow and our needs change.”

Owned by Interbank Group, Supermercados Peruanos operates under four brands: Vivanda, Plaza Vea Super, Hypermarkets Plaza Vea and Mass minimarkets. The company, which has 6,000 employees and generates annual sales in excess of $300 million, is focused on expanding the upscale Plaza Vea brand.

By replacing its aging communications systems, Supermercados Peruanos is now able to respond much faster and more efficiently to customer requests, Tomas says, thereby improving customer satisfaction levels. It also implemented Mitel’s Contact Center solution, which means there is now a single phone number for individuals to call to reach any store or the corporate office; the system routes the call to the appropriate party.

Market differentiator
The new system has helped Supermercados Peruanos gain a reputation as “a customer service-oriented company,” says Tomas -- a key market differentiator in Peru’s highly competitive $4.4 billion food retail market.

With the IP communications network, “our customers aren’t kept waiting in call queues, perhaps worrying about the cost of the call,” Tomas says. “By centralizing communications over our IP network, we have ensured that all telephone queries are dealt with quickly and efficiently. Customers call one central number and the system automatically routes their call to the appropriate contact.”

Contact Center has also made it possible for Supermercados Peruanos to consolidate some of its back-office systems by integrating various databases with the Contact Center application.

For example, the service representative can ask a customer for her account number, and the system then swiftly queries the Supermercados customer database to find the data associated with the transaction the customer is calling about.

The Mitel system has also given the Supermercados Peruanos employees the ability to send and receive voice and data via wireless IP-Dect phones and wireless handsets.

If a customer is looking for an item not on the sales floor, store-level associates don’t have to leave the customer’s side or, if the customer has called in, keep them waiting on the phone as they check the backroom to see if the item is in stock. One call to an associate in the backroom brings an immediate answer.

Additionally, when on the road, Supermercados associates, regional managers, district managers and corporate executives use Mitel’s embedded IP-based software telephone (soft phone) feature, part of the PC-based Mitel Your Assistant desktop application, to communicate and collaborate as efficiently as if they were at their office desks.

They can set up conference calls with colleagues and vendors, and the application also lets Supermercados associates collaborate with one another while looking at a common document in real time.

“They can simultaneously talk on the phone through their laptops, and on their laptops see and share data from any application on our network,” Tomas says. “We can also do video conferencing over the network.”

Supermercados also has the ability to collaborate with suppliers over the network.

As a result of the new network, Supermercados Peruanos has been able to cut communication costs in half and related labor costs by 25 percent. Going forward, it plans to implement additional applications to enhance its communications network, including integrating the soft phone application with a Wi-Fi network at the store level.

“It will give store managers the ability to make and receive phone calls from anywhere in the store, including conference calls, and they can supervise the operations of the store from anywhere in the store,” Tomas says.