It often seems that finding the right pair of shoes means striking a balance between fashion and practicality. However, one company which has always had a mission to offer both is ECCO, the Danish Footwear brand, which recently celebrated 40 years in the business.

Established by Karl Toosbuy in 1963, ECCO quickly differentiated itself by offering fashion, quality and most of all, comfort, rather than the stiff, heavy shoes worn by the older generation at that time. Since its humble beginnings in the small town of Bredebro, the family-owned company has grown to be the 7th largest brown shoe manufacturer in the world. It has production facilities around the world - manufacturing over 12.5 million pairs of shoes every year - and sells through 17,000 outlets worldwide, including over 367 ECCO stores. In 2002, the company sold more pairs of shoes than ever and increased its net turnover to 3,360 million DKK (£336 million), an increase of 4.5% on 2001.

As you would expect from such a successful organisation, ECCO has made its reputation through innovation and by refusing to compromise on quality, whether it be materials, workmanship, store staff or technology. Indeed, according to Executive Vice President, Soren Steffensen: "Only the best is good enough for us when it comes to IT solutions."

This attitude recently led ECCO to replace its aging retail software application with Global One, an innovative suite of solutions from Scandinavian Software House and ASP, SU Soft. The suite includes Shopkeeper EPoS, Product Management, Inventory Management, CRM and Business Intelligence, which have been fully integrated with ECCO's SAP enterprise management software.

While it looked at ten different solutions during the evaluation process, ECCO was particularly impressed with the enhanced inventory management - always an important issue for shoe manufacturers, given the need to offer customers a wide choice of styles in all available sizes and colours - and greater control over customer information offered by SU Soft.

ECCO's IT Manager, Klaus Nissen, explained: "Global One represented a complete value shift for ECCO, towards a completely integrated ERP solution which combines applications such as CRM, retail management, and product planning."

Working in partnership with specialist hardware and service provider, PC-PoS Nordic, SU Soft has already deployed Global One in 35 stores in 9 countries including Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Poland and the UK.

At the point of sale, the Windows-based Shopkeeper EPoS software module is running on Epson's SR-600 with its intuitive touchscreen user interface. Alongside the elegant and space-efficient terminal, which has been specifically developed for speciality stores, ECCO counters are also equipped with Epson's TM-T88III thermal receipt printers to ensure sales transactions can be managed with optimum efficiency. The stores also use Epson TM-L60 label printers to produce barcode labels for shoes and shoe boxes, making it easier to manage stock and look up product information on-screen. Each store is connected to ECCO Headquarters, via an ISDN or ADSL line so that accurate sales, stock and promotional information can be continuously exchanged "The system is much more intuitive than before and gives our managers the tools they need to operate more efficiently," commented Klaus Nissen. "This enables them to spend more time on the shop floor rather than in front of a computer. While from the company's point of view it is too early to make a specific cost benefit calculation, we are very positive about the system and particularly the level of real time stock management information we now have."

Reflecting on how the solution will support ECCO's future plans, Klaus added: "We're very excited that the system will provide the right platform for the company as we expand. For example, SU Soft is currently looking at how the system will support our Asian markets."