Winn-Dixie to Deploy Fully-Integrated IBM Front End System Chainwide

Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. plans to deploy IBM point-of-sale and self-checkout technology to help transform customer service, speed innovation, and increase the operational efficiency of its 484 Winn-Dixie store locations, as well as its other store formats across the Southeastern United States.

Winn-Dixie, working in collaboration with IBM and SAM Group, Inc. – an IBM Business Partner -- will implement a network of 6,000 IBM SurePOS 700 systems armed with IBM's SurePOS ACE and Retail Integration Framework software, which are components of IBM's Smarter Checkout solution. Winn-Dixie will also install IBM SurePoint infrared touch displays and SureMark thermal impact printers as part of its plan to create one the industry's most comprehensive, flexible and robust retail shopping environments.

"This initiative will allow us to introduce services quickly and seamlessly to improve our guests' shopping experience and will help to support our overall strategy," said Maura Hart, Winn-Dixie group VP and CIO. "We believe the functionality, reliability and open standards offered by IBM hardware and software will accelerate our innovation, which will enhance our competitiveness, as well as our ability to deliver quality service in our stores."

The new technology is expected to improve customer service, speed the checkout process, simplify store operations, and enhance store team member productivity.

In recent years, the Jacksonville, Fla.-based grocery chain has remodeled nearly half of its stores, using technology to transform and expand its produce, meat, and floral departments. It has introduced innovations such as its fuelperks! loyalty program that rewards shoppers with discounts on fuel, and customer smart-phone applications that deliver promotions to guests while they shop.

"Winn-Dixie is recognized as a premier turnaround story in the U.S. grocery industry and as a customer-centric innovator focused on improving efficiencies and creating new services for their shoppers," said Steve Ladwig, GM, IBM Retail Store Solutions. "Implementing IBM's SurePOS hardware and our ACE and Retail Integration Framework software will help Winn-Dixie to efficiently introduce new services to benefit their guests and team members."

According to IBM, key to the Winn-Dixie deployment will be the implementation of the SurePOS Application Client/Server Environment (ACE), IBM's strategic POS application for grocery and high volume retail, IBM's Retail Integration Framework (RIF), which was developed to provide a complete, flexible and robust retail-optimized infrastructure to enhance and connect store-centered and enterprise-level processes, IBM's Remote Management Agent (RMA), which enables pro-active monitoring, asset tracking and problem determination from one local store or an enterprise location, and Lotus Expeditor and Expeditor Integrator, which helps developers integrate a wide variety of applications for use on mobile devices, desktops and kiosks. The use of RMA with SurePOS hardware and 4690 software can help Winn-Dixie reduce its overall total cost of ownership, said the vendor.

In addition, the solution includes SAM Audit Explorer, software designed to enhance system support and provide file integrity monitoring for PCI compliance, SAM Refund software to provide a centralized refund management system, as well as IBM Store Integrator, Store Integrator Graphic User Interface, and IBM Data Integration Facility software.