Winners revealed at MS gala dinner

Microsoft announced its seventh annual Retail Application Developer 2007 Europe, Middle East and Africa award winners at its gala dinner in Germany, reports Earthtimes.org.

The successful firms included Knowledge Support Systems, which won the Business Insight award for its PriceStrat solution; Triangle Computer Services, which received the Communication and Collaboration Award for its Retail Manager solution; and IVIS Group, which came first in the Multi-channel category with its Sonetto Pricing & Promotions Management tool.

This year, Microsoft presented a special award, the People-Ready Business in Retail Award, to recognise the technology solution that is providing people working in retail organisations with the tools to help them strengthen customer relationships, improve operations, build high-value business connections and drive retail innovation that benefits the company as a whole.

Retail technology solutions company, Micro Technology International (MTI), has released its Brick 'n Click solution, reports emedia wire.

The solution allows retailers to interface their offline systems with a ProStores Web store. Merchants are now able to grow their traditional retail business online while maintaining a single repository of information.

Mark Manesh, CEO of MTI, says Brick 'n Click allows all aspects of operating a retail establishment to be covered, from inventory control, purchasing management and point-of-sale transactions, to employee time cards.

City Blue, a retailer targeting young urban consumers, is implementing Alpha Retail Technology's point-of-sale enterprise management system, reports Digital50.com.

The system has an automatic re-ordering system that helps maintain retailers' inventory to prevent overstocking. According to Kfir Yuster, IT director for City Blue, when an item appears in a music video or is worn by a celebrity, sales increase dramatically for a period of time.

"Because trends change in the blink of an eye, we needed a system that could track our merchandise and sales information in real-time," he notes.