Gant, the branded apparel retailer with over 750 stores in 80 countries, has rolled out the Cegid Retail’s Unified Commerce Platformacross Europe in a bid to improve stock management and customer service across multiple channels and territories. The cloud-based point-of-sale and merchandising solution has recently been added in France and goes live in the UK in March. This is part of the brand’s strategy to introduce more omnichannel and digital technologies and standardising systems throughout the group. Theinitiative follows a move to bring more of its overseas franchise partners under the same roof - such as Portugal and Spain during 2020 - as wholly-owned subsidiaries, sharing the same processes and accelerating a shift towards more digital services like “click-and-collect”.

The retail software is also pre-configured to take care of complicated tax regimes which tend to change year to year and vary from country to country. For instance, VAT and receipt rules in Portugal differ widely to those in France and Sweden.

The retailer also plans to roll out other digital services and mobile solutions across the group. It has used live video-streams in some stores to stay in touch with the customer, particularly when stores were forced to close during lockdown. GANT has also been trialing a few of Cegid’s mobility tools, including a Mobile Inventory module (for instance, to help staff carryout stock checks directly on the shop floor) as well as a mobile point-of-sale solution.