itim Group plc (LON:ITIM) has provided a Company update on work undertaken for its existing and new client base.
Since the Company announced its results in September, itim has delivered a number of core projects and expanded its depth of offering to its considerable list of retail clients.
The Group is pleased to share some of these initiatives and the details of the projects which the Directors believe show the depth of the software applications the Group now has in its portfolio:
itim products that support customer revenue growth
1. Shop local – this initiative allows a customer to pivot from shopping the ‘web warehouse’ to shopping his ‘local store’ on the website based on real-time stock.
2. Rich customer database – this provides a single view of customer across all channels. The Directors consider this to be the richest customer database in retail, which is operationally visible in-store, on the website, in the call-centre and linked to mobile apps. For example: A customer signs up in store, receives an automatic sign-on on to the website and can automatically download a mobile app showing all his engagement with the retailer.
3. A single sales platform across e-commerce, store and mobile – this makes the customer experience much better by giving the ‘retail’ customer a single view of the ‘retailer’. itim’s new sales platform now includes e-commerce and is completely cross-channel, fulfilling the omni-channel dream. itim is one of the few technology vendors to do so.
4. Selling of Product Sets on the website – potential to increase average shopping value.
5. Subscriptions – launching subscriptions linked to ‘product sets’, which has the potential to guarantee regular revenues. One customer sells about 30,000 a year.
6. Membership – a unique offering across e-commerce and stores. One retailer signed up 400,000 new customers in a year adding revenue of £40m per annum.
7. Promotions engine – allowing seamless cross channel promotions compared to having to try to align physical and digital channels.
8. Vouchers – providing not only distribution of vouchers across channels, but guaranteeing tracking of those vouchers, avoiding fraud. A good example of how this can drive revenue is distributing vouchers for redemption in store, bringing traffic back to stores.
9. E-gift cards – increasing use of omni-channel gift cards, both in support of customer service failures, but also to promote sales.
10. Account customer – The Retail Suite (“TRS”) now supports retailers having account customers, who buy ‘on account’, get invoiced and sent statements. With account customers we now support customer specific pricing. Think of these as B2B customers or even a Buy Now Pay Later (“BNPL”) proposition.
11. Micro-sites – because of our ‘headless’ e-commerce capability we believe we can launch very quickly and cheaply micro-sites to support specific sales channels. Examples could be clearance sites, B2B sites, collaborations with suppliers. This idea can also be used to create a shop within a shop on the main website.
12. Consumer mobile app – because of our single sales platform, we can give retailers a consumer facing mobile app, at what we consider to be very low cost.
13. Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) in store – essentially making all sales whether online, mobile or in-store, attributed to the store based on the postcode of the customer. Giving stores CRM capabilities so that they can engage with the customers in their community.
14. Personal shopping services in store – itim’s customers tell us that their VIP customers (usually 10% of the customer database) in most retail brands represent 40% of sales. itim’s solution is linked to the mobile app or website, allowing consumers to chat, book appointments and get curated ranges for them which can be driven by the marketing team or generated through advanced AI techniques.
Itim products that support customer margin enhancement
1. Integrated Merchandise Planning – Introducing ‘line cards’ and Weekly Sales, Stock and Intake’s (“WSSI”) in TRS, not as separate applications but as an integrated application working with data in the itim database.
2. Price and Promotions Optimisation – (Profimetrics) with 27 customers using this, we consider ourselves world experts, which has the potential to improve margin by 1-3%.
3. Stock Optimisation – (Profimetrics) this allows customers to better manage stock based on sensible stock policies.
4. Cost Optimisation – (Profimetrics) this captures supplier funding and deals, so Itim can use them for improving profitability of promotions.
5. Digital Supplier Collaboration & Marketplaces – itim is about to launch the itim hub. Building on our EDI capabilities and successes, this is a series of supplier collaboration applications, which would allow any retailer to become more of a marketplace. Allowing for new business models like ‘consignment stock’ and ‘vendor managed inventory management’, ‘self-billing etc’.
6. Improved Invoice Matching and Earning Income from Supplier Payments – itim’s Didos application is in 30 major retailers in the UK. The Company is now looking on how customers can cash in on the money they can recoup from suppliers on the back of payments and invoice discounting.
Ali Athar, itim Group plc Chief Executive, commented: “We are delighted by the considerable breadth of offering that we provide our customers. Our full suite of omnichannel products serves to improve revenue opportunities and optimise the retail potential for the client. We will update the market on the progress we have made in our January trading update.”
itim Group was established in 1993 by its founder, and current Chief Executive Officer, Ali Athar. itim was initially formed as a consulting business, helping retailers effect operational improvement. From 1999 the Company began to expand into the provision of proprietary software solutions and by 2004 the Company was focused exclusively on digital technology. itim has grown both organically and through a series of acquisitions of small, legacy retail software systems and associated applications which itim has redeveloped to create a fully integrated end to end Omni-channel platform.
