Joosubs, the family-owned furniture retailer, has decided to implement Argility’s Ceres retail software suite across its existing network of stores.
Ceres provides a tried-and-trusted solution that has been relied upon by retailers for the past 20 years. In terms of the deal, Argility will implement Ceres in each store, and then host the solution from its data centre. This means that Joosubs will effectively access Ceres as a service for a monthly fee.
“Businesses today are operating in a rapidly evolving environment where it is necessary to constantly invent new ways of doing business that is founded on a platform that supports this changing landscape as they go forward,” says Joosubs CEO, Rasheed Gutta.
“Joosubs legacy system does not offer any of the functionality that a modern retailer requires. As our business expands, we need a robust system framework that will support growth and provide reliable financial information to enable optimal decision-making. The Ceres solution allows us to adapt to these changes without the high cost and effort involved with off-the-shelf software. One of the most attractive aspects of the Ceres solution is that it caters for both cash and credit options for customers. It also provides multi-device support for kiosk and tablets where required.
“Ultimately, Argility’s depth of experience in retail and its established hosting infrastructure clinched the deal for us,” Gutta adds.
Founded in Mahikeng in 1904, Joosubs currently has stores in Mahikeng, Rustenburg, Soweto, Johannesburg (Southgate and Westgate) and Emalahleni. The company markets the Home Italia range, making international quality product affordable to the local market.
Jai Kalyan, divisional executive at Argility, says the new partnership with Joosubs is significant because it shows how the cloud computing model gives a mid-sized company access to resources that were previously the domain of larger players.
“Joosubs has the vision and ambition to see how accessing a top-end retail system, like Ceres, can help it to compete successfully with larger competitors in a very contested marketplace,” he says. “We believe the hosting model will be increasingly attractive to mid-sized and even small retailers wanting to improve margins and gain market share.”
Kalyan emphasises that Ceres is geared at all levels to support the exponentially demanding world of the multi-channel consumer driven environment. “This includes pulling customers on social media to store fronts – physical or digital; fulfilling their buying journey on multiple channels – in-store, mobile or website.
“It also ensures that information on inventory, for example, pricing and availability, is obtainable accurately across all touch points to both employees and customers,” he adds.
Kalyan confirms that Ceres provides full back-office, financial, inventory management and point of sale capabilities in an integrated, easy-to-use suite. Each Joosubs store will run its own instance of Ceres, which will be batch-loaded to the Argility data centre daily, where it will be replicated and held centrally. This means that trading will not be affected by network downtime, and the central replication means that highly accurate financial and other information, will be available to management in near real time, Kalyan says.
Argility has completed implementing Ceres at the Joosubs stores in Maponya Mall, Soweto, Southgate, Westgate and Witbank.