Sveinn Aki Ludviksson

GoPro Landsteinar Group, an Iceland-based company providing software solutions for the retail segment, has recently entered the Indian market. The company has tied up with Delhi-based Futurescape Netcom for marketing and selling its GoPro Retail solution in India. The solution will be available in the market as part of Navision’s integrated ERP solution. For this, Futurescape has tied up with Navision and will be selling and implementing all its ERP solutions targeted at the retail vertical.

According to Sveinn Aki Ludviksson, the director of sales for Business Solutions at GoPro Landsteinar, the company’s entry into the Indian market is a result of growing opportunities in the retail market here. “As per a study conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and McKinsey, the Indian retail market has been estimated to be worth $180 billion and at 10-11 percent is also one of the largest contributors to India’s GDP,” he added.

According to Namrata Rana, managing director of Futurescape, through GoPro the company will be providing an integrated retail ERP suite that manages Point of Sales (POS) systems, product inventory and synchronises supply chain for cost-effective retail management. The GoPro Retail solution provides for both back-end and front-end features like receiving goods in store, inventory management, making cheques, accounting, handling transactions and making shelf labels.

The company’s product offerings include RetailPro Retail Back Office (RBO) and PlusPOS systems. The former acts as a link between POS terminals within the store and Navision business accounting software and handles data flow between stores and POS. RBO also manages fundamental aspects of retail business like items, prices, POS management and communication, staff, customer and sales, apart from providing management reports and label printing. On the other hand, PlusPOS is a point-of-sale application with keyboard and touch-screen facilities along with connectivity with standard peripherals like printers and scanners. It is integrated with standard applications in Navision to provide features like currency handling, multiple prices per item or price levels, promotions, creating store coupons, cheque printing, infocodes and sub-infocodes to assist the cashier, putting on hold and retrieving of transactions. As part of the GoPro Retail Application Suite, the company also provides GoPro Transaction Server to handle data communication between back office and front end.

In addition there are add-on products like PlusPOS Remote to enable PlusPOS to be run in a normal terminal server session in a WAN; handPoint for GoPro Retail, a template-based application which generates multifaceted mobile work processes, enabling use of handheld devices.

It is understood that Navision and Futurescape will be jointly involved in integration, consultancy, pre-sales, customisation, implementation and maintenance exercises for all the customers of Navision going for retail solutions. Both the companies are currently in talks with various companies with a retail presence for the solution and a few orders are likely to be in hand by the year-end. For Futurescape, which has already been providing solutions in the areas of CRM and IT integration, the initiative will give it a significant thrust in the retail solutions market.

In view of the recent tie-ups and to grow its retail solutions business, Futurescape has received Rs 7.5 crore as investment into its retail solutions division from Chesterton, a retailing chain which has an equity stake in the company. This amount will be invested towards setting up a development centre in Delhi and regional sales offices across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.