Step Ahead is a family run business, which started from selling size 4 sample shoes out of a car boot to the 18 store business it is today.  The 18 stores are spread throughout Johannesburg, South Africa.  Step Ahead has established itself as a leading up-market ladies' footwear retailer.

Step Ahead prides itself on excellent customer service and aims to continue to exceed customers' expectations and when looking for an IT company to work with, this was of paramount importance.  Retail Technology Limited was awarded the Step Ahead contract for the implementation of Microsoft Dynamic’s Retail Management System (RMS) throughout our stores.

We caught up with one of the company directors, Greg Holding to find out what he thought about Retail Technology Limited, the software they offer and an overall view of the company, and this is what he had to say.

What made Step Ahead choose Microsoft Dynamics RMS as a solution for your Shoe Retail Outlets?

After coming to the conclusion that we did not want to develop our own bespoke software, we started researching solutions on the market.  A decision was made that it was going to be more cost effective to use available software that could be adapted to suit our business needs.  Our chosen solution was Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management Systems (RMS).  Microsoft’s RMS with its SQL database fitted our requirements, and forms the core of our IT system.  We had looked at other ‘home grown” products, but none met our requirements completely as they focused on a variety of verticals and did not meet the specific requirements that are unique to footwear retail.  Most of the “home grown” products resulted in being “jack of all trades but master of none”.

Did Microsoft Dynamics RMS meet with all the requirements of a Shoe retailer?  And if not, how did you overcome this?

Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System provides me with 90% of all of my requirements out of the box. The remaining 10% is provided by Retail Technology Limited’s RMS Add-Ins that makes this Microsoft product into a system that fulfills my business requirements!

I was aware of certain shortcomings with Microsoft RMS and knew there were a few companies out there that developed software to add-on to the RMS core application.  These Add-Ins greatly enhance the core application.  Retail Technology Limited was one of these companies.  It is their RMS Add-ins that made us ultimately decide to go with the RMS solution.

Retail Technology Limited is focused on the footwear and apparel retail business and really understands its requirements well.  What works for one vertical market often does not apply to others.  Working with companies that spread themselves across too many verticals can also be frustrating as development ideas are pulled in different directions.  This is counterproductive and ends up as a substandard solution.

This is not the case with RTL and their years of experience in this vertical allows them to work with all their customers to achieve the end goal – to have the best footwear and apparel focused retailing software solution.

What made you decide to use Retail Technology Limited, in the UK over a local South African RMS reseller?

In South Africa, we found many RMS resellers but could not find many South African companies doing much development work with the RMS software.  And no developers focusing on footwear and apparel Add-ins.  RTL have Add-ins that enhances the apparel and footwear industry and this software fitted our business requirements.  The functionality that this software gives to the core RMS application was exactly what we required and ultimately was what made us decide to go with the Microsoft Dynamics RMS solution.

You are currently using RTL Matrix Pro, RTL Reports Pro and RTL POS Utilities - how do you feel that these Add-ins enhance Microsoft Dynamics RMS?

Without the RTL Add-ins, the RMS software would be pointless in the footwear and the apparel vertical.  RTL Matrix Pro and RTL Reports Pro allow us to control all our stores from a head office environment.  RTL Matrix Pro is a very user friendly tool that allows us to view all product details and make changes to products extremely quickly and easily.  When placing items on sale for example, we use the Quick Editor functionality and we are able to complete tasks within no time at all.  The RTL Reports Pro module is extremely powerful and we use this module to extract all our businesses KPI’s.  We are also able to control the movement of our stock between all 18 branches very effectively, with the information that we are able to extract from our database.

RTL POS Utilities simplifies processes in our stores – cashiers can quickly receive and send goods between stores or to suppliers.

You are also using Retail Technology’s third party backup solution, how does this add value to your system?

This gives me the peace of mind knowing that our data is backed up offsite on a daily basis.  Should anything untoward happen to our hardware, our data is available very quickly, minimising the amount of downtime.

How do you feel Retail Technology coped with getting all 18 stores rolled out?

RTL handled the project extremely well. It was evident that they had previous experience in a multiple store roll out, and following trusted procedures, ensured that everything went smoothly.  The support staff working on the project were dedicated to the success of the roll out.  They understood the importance of making sure there was limited down time.  The focus that RTL places on customer service is impressive.  This was the single most important factor that eased any concerns of working with a company that was so far away.

What level of support do you receive and do you find the distance a problem?

We are able to contact the support technicians via Skype or chat to them via a Live Chat available on RTL’s website.  There are also the more conventional methods of logging a case via the support pages on the website, email or telephone.  We have one IT Administrator that manages all our IT and should there be a need to contact RTL, the IT Administrator is the person to do this.

The distance has not proved to be any more problematic than remote support from within South Africa.  The time zones between South Africa and the UK being negligible, our support issues are dealt with very quickly.  The support technicians deliver a high-end support service.