bluebee® for retail, with POS integration

Facilities Management and Risk Prevention (sometimes called Asset Protection) are becoming critical for retailers in China, as they grow in an increasingly complex and competitive environment. The challenges faced by retailers include:

– Multiple sites, multiple regions, multiple suppliers, fast growth
– Increasing awareness: accidents, food safety, quality, corporate image
– Low construction quality, quickly aging assets
– Tough competitive environment…
– “Human Resource” issues – turnover, skills, experience

Retailers may have defined their “best practice” in terms of Facilities Management (FM) or Risk Prevention (RP), but how do they ensure this best practices is actually applied to all the stores? Traditional paper-based processes, relying on procedures, coaching, auditing, etc. often do not work in China. In a large organization, they also represent an enormous administrative burden.

bluebee^®, Siveco’s solution for multisite facilities operator, has proven successful in helping retailers in China to overcome those challenges. A typical scenario is shown below:

Store users report issues (incidents, failures, job requests) directly in their POS. Issue are sent to the central bluebee^® cloud Facilities Management & Risk Prevention system for processing, with immediate acknowledgment to the POS user.

A large touch-screen at Central Control Center (CCC) displays all issues emanating from store users, as well as alarms and data feeds from third-party systems (stores BMS, video surveillance, e-reputation/media monitoring, weather and disasters report, etc). CCC users define actions for employees or suppliers, dispatch and monitor progress.

In-house or external technicians receive notifications in their bluebee^® app. They obtain immediate assistance from the technical knowledge-base and can call experts or suppliers. Scanning of asset tags (barcode or RFID) and GPS positioning ensures that the job is actually performed. Store users acknowledge work done in their POS or directly by signing on the technician’s mobile.

Managers and auditors (e.g. fire safety audit, facilities audit, yearly store visit, etc.) report non-compliances or problems directly in their tablet, with photos, voice recordings, notes. The visit report is automatically created and sent in pdf format, while all data is synchronized into the central database. The tablet app, designed for larger screen ensures easy access to documents, drawings and to the entire bluebee^® cloud web portal.

Any authorized user, in house or external, can access bluebee^® cloud on the web. Functional scope of the solution includes Facilities Maintenance, including energy meters, suppliers contracts for parts and services, etc. and Risk Prevention, including HSE, loss prevention, etc. bluebee^® cloud can be installed in-house or leased in SaaS model, running on Siveco servers.

The system produces reports for management and decision support at all levels: user, store, region/territory, national level. Reports can be automatically sent by email in various format or displayed on-screen in the form of KPIs or drill-down reports.

Retailers face a choice between implementing software developed outside of China, often catering to foreign needs (those of retailers in Western countries, facing very different challenges in a very different environment) or custom-developed software by a local IT firm.

In comparison, the bluebee^® suite presents many advantages:

– bluebee^® is specifically designed to address the needs of retailers in China

– bluebee^® has won multiple industry awards, including the 2013 CHaINA Supply Chain Excellence Award for the Carrefour China RPMS project.

– bluebee^® is fully bilingual Chinese-English.

– bluebee^® is designed based on ISO 31000 Risk Management and other international standards.

– R&D is done in Shanghai, with full technical support offered locally

– bluebee^® is already proven on a very large scale, with Carrefour China (250 stores), Sephora China (150 stores), Greenland (100 sites), Changcheng Property (300 sites), Cofely (100 contracts), etc.

– Siveco China is the country’s largest maintenance consultancy, celebrating its 10 years in the Chinese market in 2014.

Tags： integration、retail、risk prevention、bluebee、bluebee cloud、POS、FM