Retail IT Summit: Specsavers targets growth with reusable tech templates

Specsavers, the UK's largest optical retail chain, has met its recent growth targets with the help of reusable technology components.

The optician, whose strategy for growth is based on overseas expansion through acquisition, has doubled its store estate within the last five years, after having previously taken 20 years since it was first established to reach the 500-stores mark.

Now with 1,000 stores in the UK, Nordics and Asia Pacific regions, IT continues to facilitate the company's ambitious strategic plans with the ability to deploy systems quickly and economically, according to Specsavers' chief information officer (CIO) Michel Kahn.

"We took a position that we needed consistency wherever we went," he said. "We decided we had to have top-class, efficient and consistent IT solutions in two forms: those handling the business process and those handling the data. Our strategy was to build it once, deploy it everywhere."

Kahn said Specsavers' IT runs on Red Hat Linux operating system, which keeps licensing costs to a minimum. Applications are split into three distinct areas covering store systems, supply chain and back office functions. These are linked together with a service oriented architecture (SOA) that makes use of an enterprise service bus.

"It was a challenge for the IT team to encapsulate all the business process in three key application suites, but it has a difference that allows us to deploy systems in 12-week windows," he said.

Three years ago, the IT department made the transition to an SOA-based strategy based on Java programming and Agile development methodologies. Now it is able to support the business with rapid, proven technology rollouts that only need customising for regional variations according to currency, language and regulatory requirements.

"Specsavers in a box represents the business process, trading philosophy and standards of customer service of the company, while trading variants like legal differences can be layered on top," said Kahn.

As a result of this success, the company has now set its sights on doubling its number of stores again by 2010. "Now we have an economic solution that's easy to deploy and the growth of the company demands it," he said.

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