If Progressive Enterprises develops an online shopping service under the Foodtown brand, it will use the facilities and core design of the existing Woolworths online system.
But the two brands will retain separate identities.
Progressive took over Woolworths NZ last year, and is currently running trials to assess the viability of a Foodtown shopping website, dependent on the interest of customers, says Progressive chief operating officer Ted van Arkel.
But the chains have “committed Foodtown shoppers and committed Woolworths shoppers” and it makes sense to continue to support the latter thro-ugh their own brand identity, he says.
On the financial side all Woolworths systems will be switched to SAP, which is the basis of Progressive’s ERP system. Similarly Woolworths’ supply chain system will be cut over from its current Dallas system to Progressive’s M204 application, known internally as Promise.
“SAP migration will take about a month, because we’ve been running it for a long time in Progressive,” van Arkel says. “Supply chain will probably take the whole of this year.”