SK-II Boutique Spa is a collaboration between renowned skincare brand, SK-II and Singapore-based luxury spa specialist Senze Salus. Combining the goodness of SK-II products with excellent spa services, it provides an experience that tantalises the senses and leaves customers with radiant, crystal clear skin.
The spa pays special attention to customers' skin concerns and tailor treatment according to their skin care needs. Its team of experienced beauty therapists provides a customised treatment plan, and follow-through with careful monitoring to ensure progressive improvement.
Believing that skin care is a long-term process, the spa's aim is to help customers develop and preserve crystal clear skin.
As business grew over the past three years, SK-II Boutique Spa realised that its point-of-sale (POS) system was not able to cope with the complexities which were inherent in spa operations. For example, commission structure and payout are complex because they are multi-dimensional involving both sales and operational staff, such as the therapist who executes the facial.
Real time reports with accurate and up to date data also needed to be accessible from multiple locations – the corporate headquarters and two outlets - for decision-making and payroll.
The technical challenge was the complexity in requirements plus the need for multiple location support, including the possibility of cross-border implementation as the spa has plans to expand to other countries.
"We were using a POS system which was based on Windows. It was a closed and inflexible system," said Calvin Tan, Managing Director of SK-II Boutique Spa. "What we needed was a highly customisable system that is scalable and can grow with us."
While he wanted a highly customisable solution, Tan was mindful that a technically competent vendor was required to ensure stability of the application despite the customisation.
SK-II Boutique Spa shortlisted and evaluated a few solutions before deciding on a dual core Intel server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5) operating system, JBoss 4 Java Application Server and mobyLoyalty, a loyalty application developed in Java.
The decision was based on the scalability of the solution, the track record of the vendor and the availability of support.
"We chose Red Hat because it is a cost effective solution. The application is scalable and allows for expansion of features as well as support for our growing business and database," said Tan.
mobyLoyalty has been deployed at a coffee chain with 20 outlets across Singapore and has already undergone two years of enhancements. Customer relationship management (CRM) and short messaging service (SMS) type functions can be added as and when required.
"Although our system will be further customised, we were confident in what we saw, giving us the comfort of a robust and proven platform," said Tan.
SK-II Boutique Spa was also impressed with the implementation track record across various industries of Philip Tang & Sons (PTS), a Red Hat Infocomm Local Industry Upgrading Programme (iLIUP) Partner.
Availability of support was another key consideration. Tan noted that the skill set availability and technical competency of the vendor in supporting the server operating system and application were important. "This is also why we choose RHEL 5," he said.
PTS took just two months to customise and implement the solution. SK-II Boutique Spa is pleased with the results as the system has proven to be stable and reliable, with minimal downtime.
It can now do things which it could not do previously, such as having real-time access to data. "Our old POS systems were not networked so data could not be shared. Now, we can view data real-time and generate whatever reports we require in a jiffy," said Tan. "The timeliness of management reports is critical and assists greatly in decision-making."
Payroll used to be a challenge as it took about a week to collate data to pay staff salary and commission. This process is now a breeze and the spa can pay staff more timely and accurately, leading to better employee relations.
Tan noted that the Red Hat subscription model allowed his company to defer the high initial investments and converted the cost from capital expenditure to operational expenditure. This has allowed the spa to stage its investments in the entire platform, which was important as it needed time to refine the loyalty programme and software application functionality.
"Our experience with Red Hat and open source has been great. The operating system and application have run smoothly and are very flexible, allowing us to customise according to our needs," he said.
Franklin Tang, Marketing Director of PTS, pointed out that the technology partnership with Red Hat under iLIUP has enabled his company to develop and deliver solutions that are relevant to the market.
"Once again, Red Hat has been very supportive and instrumental in ensuring the successful implementation at SK-II Boutique Spa," said Tang.
Following the successful implementation and proven experience with the Red Hat solution, SK-II Boutique Spa plans to upgrade the platform to involve more CRM functions to better satisfy its members' needs.
"We are very satisfied with the reliability and robustness of the platform. We have been running the application without any major glitch, unscheduled downtime nor maintenance requirements," said Tan.
