Sandwich chain Pret A Manger has gone live with an online ordering system for delivering store-specific promotional material across its 170 shops.

The Online Stock Room system was created for the marketing team to reduce waste by ensuring that staff could only view and order promotional items appropriate for their branch.

But it is now also being used to handle internal health and safety material as well.

“The original brief represented an outsourcing of marketing point-of-sale (POS) management and ticketing collateral,” said marketing projects manager Anthony Eadon. “But after a successful rollout, other areas of our business are migrating their printed collateral process too.”

The Online Stock Room created by supplier Pierhouse uses an automated system that can produce 2,000 unique artworks per hour. Print-ready PDFs can be sent to suppliers anywhere in the country.

Pret is already seeing the business benefits though labour savings at head office and within individual shops, said Eadon.

“Automating the system has removed the need to manage POS and tickets manually and it has reduced the number of enquiries to head office,” he said.

“Accurate tracking also improves forecasting and stock management.”