Musgrave Group, Ireland’s largest grocery and food distributor, has just completed the first phase roll-out of this advanced print control software for point-of-sale materials to all SuperValu and Centra stores in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Previously, all this material would have been printed and supplied by Musgrave’s offices in Belfast and Cork. The company expects to achieve significant cost-savings by eliminating the oversupply of materials, and the stores will benefit considerably from the flexibility of being able to handle local promotions very quickly and easily. Musgrave took the strategic decision to upgrade support for its SuperValu and Centra stores about a year ago.

Having previously engaged the services of Image Computer Systems on a consultancy basis, the company was already aware of the benefits of EnSign print control software, and judged that its ease of operation made it ideal for in-store use. Under the terms of a major order for Image, Musgrave purchased and installed 211 site licenses in its SuperValu store base (178 SuperValu stores in the Republic and 33 in Northern Ireland). A further 387 licenses have also been purchased for its Centra chain (327 Centra stores in the Republic and 60 in Northern Ireland), which will be installed in the coming months.

The overall system architecture and project implementation currently varies slightly between the two store chains and either side of the border. For SuperValu stores in Northern Ireland, the main database in Musgrave’s Belfast facility outputs all pricing data in Excel spreadsheet format, which is transmitted to PCs in all stores in the province on a weekly basis, via modems and the public switched telephone network. Store personnel then merge this data with standard templates for promotional material that are held on the PC, and print out whatever they require; the EnSign software automatically handles all text styling and positioning issues.

The stock material is held by Musgrave’s warehouse system, and ordered by the store on an ad hoc basis. A similar approach is used for the Centra chain in Northern Ireland, but the pricing data is distributed to the stores once a week in the form of a booklet. The store personnel then simply key in the appropriate data prior to printing.