Morrisons selects Automic to streamline processes ahead of Orsyp's Dollar Universe

Speed of deployment was key factor in decision, Morrisons' IT operations manager tells Computing

UK supermarket chain Morrisons has selected business software provider Automic to automate its processes to make them more coherent and consistent across its supply chain.

Tony Stephenson, IT operations manager at Morrisons, told Computing that the supermarket chain's IT systems have to deal with more complexity than other retailers because it produces its own food through its "vertically integrated manufacturing business".

"As we manufacture, sort, grade and pack our produce, we need everything to be consistent across the supply chain; with separate cogs being brought together to make all processes coherent," he said.

"Through sheer size and scale, we wouldn't be able to do that manually. Automation allows us to keep all of these elements streamlined and manageable, and helps to keep things running in the background, by sitting across various applications that are critical to the business," he added.

Morrisons looked at other products including Orsyp's Dollar Universe scheduling tool but found that Automic stood out from the competition because of its speed of deployment and ease of use.

"Automic is able to deliver fast and consistent workflows better than other competing solutions. We considered its application management solution to have the best templates, which are easy to implement and could be integrated into our existing solutions quickly," Stephenson said.

Automic's platform enables Morrisons to connect its disparate systems: it has an IBM mainframe that runs bespoke applications, Oracle's Retail systems, Oracle's E-Business Suite and Oracle Warehouse Management System. The supermarket will also link Automic's platform to Oracle's Data Integrator (ODI) as well as running in-house Unix housekeeping scripts.

Training for Morrisons' IT staff to use the Automic platform was included in the package, said Stephenson.

He added that Automic would continue to be involved in the retailer's plans.