Australia: New EFT Technology System for 7-Eleven

The Australian 7-Eleven convenience chain is looking to Australia and New Zealand Banking Group for a new electronic funds transfer (EFT) system for its 386 stores, replacing its previous in-house system.

Denis Lewis, Chief Information Officer for 7 Eleven Australia explains "We were going to have to do some significant upgrades to the current solution to make it compliant with all of the new demands of the card issuers in terms of security and encryption and all of those things. It made more sense to replace it with an up-to-date system.”

Although the new system would in part be funded via merchant fees, there was still some capital investment on the system. Lewis said "It's something that takes us forward rather than shoring up an old solution.”

The business case for developing an EFT system in-house had been badly damaged by rules made by the Reserve Bank on interchange fees since 7-Eleven developed its system seven years ago.  The banks used to pay quite high fees for EFT transactions. The changes in all the rules reduced  income  significantly.  7-Eleven Australia 19-strong IT team was currently testing the new system. Lewis expects to see the new system rolled out to the stores network by this coming Christmas.

Last year 7 Eleven Australia completed an SAP upgrade that was the basis for 7-Eleven's SAP business intelligence implementation, phase one of which went live in December 2008 ad head office. The company is now  able to really monitor what's happening at a store level in terms of inventory. The additional information has allowed them to use extensively in supply negotiations.  Phase two is to move the use of the system to the stores, not just the head office.

Another key project has been eServices, carried out with a company called Touch Networks. The project revolves around creating the capability to sell lottery tickets or transport cards using the chain's Radiant point of sale system instead of through a separate kiosk run by the ticket seller in the 7-Eleven store.

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