Warehouse management solution from Manhattan Associates will help Tesco improve customer service. It was today announced at Manhattan Associates' UK user conference, Momentum, being hosted at the British Museum in London, that Tesco.com has selected Microsoft Corp and Manhattan Associates to provide the technology platform for a critical piece of Tesco.com's supply chain in support of the launch of Tesco Direct. Tesco Direct is a new website that offers a choice of over 8,000 non-food lines. Under this initiative, order fulfilment in a new operations centre will be managed in-house using Manhattan Associates' Warehouse Management and Performance Management solutions, supported by Microsoft technology. Linked to Tesco.com's web servers and enterprise systems, the solutions will provide the online retailer with a single view of this important part of its supply chain. Tesco.com expects the new solutions will help it achieve a tight control over its fulfilment operation, delivering efficiency improvements, shorter delivery times and high levels of availability, responsiveness and customer service as its business grows. With the launch of Tesco Direct, Tesco.com customers can not only do their grocery shopping online, but also make online purchases of a wide range of non-food goods such as sofas, kitchenware, gifts, toys and sports products. The delivery of some lines was previously outsourced to logistics partners. By bringing all fulfilment in-house, Tesco.com believes it will be able to provide an improved service to its customers. Jon Higgins, IT director of Tesco.com, explained that the changes relate directly to making life better for customers. "Tesco.com now supplies far more than a weekly grocery shop to a large proportion of our customers. By bringing fulfilment under our control we can ensure a consistently high level of service across all product categories while streamlining our own operations. We wanted to continue to operate on Microsoft technology and the Manhattan Associates solutions have a proven versatility in a multi-channel retail environment, plus the ability to scale easily and adapt to a constantly evolving business model. The fact that they can also be integrated with, and complement, our existing enterprise systems, provides us with the total visibility and control we are seeking across our supply chain that will enable us to drive operational efficiencies at the same time as optimising customer service." Dilip Popat, managing director, Microsoft EMEA Retail Industry Unit, said, "As retailers try to better balance supply with demand, they recognise that the right technology empowers their employees with better tools to carry out tasks more quickly and efficiently and, as a result, enabling their business to offer improved customer service and experience. We are delighted that Tesco.com continues to choose Microsoft and its partners. The Manhattan Associates solution exemplifies the Microsoft Smarter Retailing initiative which delivers the technology and support to help retailers compete through greater efficiency within the supply chain." Steve Smith, vice-president, EMEA, Manhattan Associates, said, "Manhattan Associates' scalable supply chain solutions are very suited to companies like Tesco.com whose business is constantly growing and whose business model is constantly evolving. Our demand-to-consumption range of supply chain solutions will allow Tesco.com to add more business process capabilities as and when they are needed." Based on an open systems architecture, the Manhattan Associates solutions operate on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database technologies, connecting to Tesco.com's web servers and enterprise systems via Microsoft's business process automation tool Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006.