Science Museum overhauls retail IT

The trading company behind the Science Museum is overhauling the London attraction's retail management systems to get better visibility of sales and stock.

NMSI Trading, which also operates the National Railway Museum in York and the National Media Museum in Bradford, has taken on the new software to streamline the ordering and replenishment of stock across its group and so improve the availability of merchandise to its visitors.

Its new investment in retail IT from specialist provider Futura will replace an existing, eight-year-old electronic point-of-sale system and integrate with NMSI's finance system to enable automatic ordering and avoid manual duplication.

The Futura system will also work with the Science Museum's online store to handle stock control and replenishment via automatically generated replenishment reporting.

Helen Illingworth, head of retail at NMSI, said the investment would provide a real-time system, powerful enough to cope with fast transaction throughput, especially at peak visitor periods such as school holidays.

Illingworth said NMSI chose Futura as a result of a competitive tender, because it offered a "user friendly, intuitive system, which does not require extensive IT support, responsiveness to customer needs and a willingness to customise modules for us".

She added that she expects the new system to increase the amount of goods sold at full margin, improve product margins and maximise inventory reduction through efficient allocation and replenishment advice.

This is because its reports will show profit and sales by till, employee and stock keeping unit (SKU), either by day or by month, as well as reflect stock turnover and performance by product and category. These reports will be emailed across the country to relevant managers in the different locations.

Illingworth added that the organisation is looking to take on new workflow modules to extend the system, as well as linking its attraction membership schemes to loyalty cards.

The Science Museum will also use the new system to help create special offers in shop and online, as well as promote stocking filler items in time for Christmas 2008.

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