OREANDA-NEWS. August 17, 2012. In the context of the development of retailer relations activities, GMCS, an advanced IT-consulting company, established a new subdivision – Retail Solutions Department headed by Sergei Kotov. As the Department Director, Sergei will supervise projects for the chain retail and develop relations with new customers – retailers in Moscow and the RF regions.

The GMCS expertise in the field of retail is presented by projects for the companies such as X5 Retail Group, Tekhnnosila, CenterObuv, New Yorker, MIR etc. Today, GMCS offers to retailers a wide line of products from the leading suppliers which covers solutions of day-to-day tasks of management of any format retail outlets from a corner shop, fashion boutique to a multi product supermarket (finances and accounting, management of operations and POS-terminals, product range, and logistics), as well as strategic business-tasks. Specifically, to optimize supply chain, analysis of business operations and strategic planning, GMCS offers JDA Software SCP-solutions and products of an American company River Logic.

The Retail Solutions Department will play the role of the industry expertise center and unite the functions of promotion, sales, and development of new functional solutions. When Sergei Kotov came to the GMCS team, the product line was augmented by Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail – a specialized Microsoft solution for retail. Based on this solution and under his supervision, a project is being implemented for ECCO Shoes Chain, a Danish brand.

“The chain retail industry is characterized by a high level of IT-system development and dependence of a company’s development on proper organization and scaling of store automation systems, logistics, product range management and business analytics”, comments Sergei Kotov. “I hope my experience in retail and logistics, as well as expertise in management of large and complex IT-systems will be in demand and will be augmented in the GMCS team by projects of creation of new solutions for the chain retail management”.

“We’ve known Sergei for a long time by joint projects in which he was on the part of customers, and we are glad that he became a GMCS team member. Sergei is a real professional in his field; he knows the market specificity and he knows exactly what the market needs. We expect that new interesting retail projects will appear in the near future”, noted Ekaterina Voropayeva, GMCS President.

Curriculum vitae:

Sergei Kotov was born in 1969 in Tyumen; graduated from the State Marine Technical University of St. Petersburg in 1993.

From 1994 to 2002 – He rose through the ranks from an IT -System Support Specialist and Database Programmer to the IT-Service Director at Rosagrosnab Federal Leasing Company. From 2003 to 2005 – He was in charge of the organization of IT-Department operations and Microsoft Dynamics AX (Axapta) ERP development project at ASB Rating, a large distribution company. From 2005 to 2007 – He worked for retail chains Perekrestok and X5 Retail Group, a Russian retail leader, in which he implemented the projects on the organization IT-Support Services and integration of the respective services of Perekrestok and Pyatyorochka. During the period from 2008 to 2009, he completed the projects of automation of Tsaritsino Group Distribution Center and reorganization of the IT-Service. In 2010, as IT-Director, he participated in the project of opening Telecom Express, the Russian largest outsourcing call center opened in record-breaking time (6 months).

Sergei Kotov has valid professional project management certificates from PMI, Sovnet (IPMA), GAPPS, Microsoft, and Certificates for ITIL and business training organization. Also Sergei conducts research on quality management of large systems and labor performance (some of the results are published at his professional blog at http://www.rb.ru/blog/serge-kotov/).