MONTREAL, QC--(Marketwired - Jun 18, 2015) - Aptos, Inc., formerly Epicor Retail Solutions, today announced that John Hnanicek, CIO of Charming Charlie, the rapidly growing women's contemporary jewelry and accessory retailer, has been named the RIS News 2015 CIO of the Year for Strategic Impact by RIS News, a key authoritative channel for retail perspectives. Hnanicek was recognized during an awards dinner last night at the Retail Executive Summit held at the Montage Resort in Laguna Beach, Calif.
RIS News CIO of the Year awards recognize overall technology and business leadership and successful implementation of key technology advancement initiatives which shift retailers in a new direction, market or channel.
As CIO of Charming Charlie, Hnanicek has moved the retailer to a Cloud strategy -- leveraging a mix of private cloud offerings and off-the-shelf Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions -- to reduce cost and complexity and improve efficiency and agility. The strategy has focused on ushering in real business transformation, as opposed to mere process improvements or technology refreshes. With its Cloud model, Charming Charlie is now gaining extensibility, faster time-to-market and speed-to-value, and support on a global scale without the need for extensive capital investments, as well as best-in-class disaster recovery, business continuity and site replication.
As part of this cloud initiative, Charming Charlie is leveraging the Aptos Store POS in the Cloud offering. Designed to provide an outstanding customer and associate experience, the Aptos Store POS in the Cloud solution also helps retailers reduce cost and complexity and improve efficiency and agility. Charming Charlie had its first pilot store location go live on the solution this month. By putting its POS in the cloud, Charming Charlie is gaining ultimate flexibility to support effortless POS deployment to any country/region and to any device. Now celebrating its 10th year in business, Charming Charlie has more than 350 stores across North America and recently announced its entry into international territory.
"We applaud John for his 2015 CIO of the Year award win for driving exceptional strategic impact and business results for Charming Charlie," said Noel Goggin, Aptos CEO. "John's vision for leveraging the cloud to simplify IT and improve business velocity and agility is enabling Charming Charlie to focus its full resources on supporting future business growth and driving competitive advantage."
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In an era of virtually limitless choice, sustained competitive advantage only comes to retailers who engage customers differently -- by truly understanding who they are, what they want and why they buy. At Aptos, we too, believe that engaging customers differently is critical to our success. We are committed to a deep understanding of each of our clients, to fulfilling their needs with the retail industry's most comprehensive omni-channel solutions, and to fostering long-term relationships built on tangible value and trust. More than 500 retail brands rely upon our Singular Commerce™ platform to deliver every shopper a personalized, empowered and seamless experience...no matter when, where or how they shop. Learn more: www.aptos.com.
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