Press room

The event was presided over the Prime Minister of the Basque Government, Juan José Ibarretxe, who was accompanied by Constan Dacosta, the President of Eroski and Agustín Markaide, the Managing Director of Eroski.

Prime Minister Ibarretxe spoke about the role of innovation in the society of the 21st century, calling it a lever for transformation: “In the 80s we learnt to compete, which was the lever for transformation back then; in the 90s you had to compete and co-operate; and today you have to innovate, but not in any old way, you have to innovate with values, to innovate is to improve the quality of life”. As far as Eroski’s role in innovation is concerned, the Prime Minister said that examples like Géminis show its capacity for innovation on a day-to-day basis.

For his part, the President of EROSKI, Constan Dacosta, said that EROSKI is an example of a company “with innovation of thought”. According to Mr Dacosta, “to do different things you have to think in a different way, and we have shown that we are able to do that in order to excel”. By way of example, he mentioned the Eroski contributions, an innovative form of self-financing; Alidis, the way to become international without any outlets abroad, and co-operativisation, a unique, pioneering project to enable all Eroski workers to become owners of the company.

Agustín Markaide, EROSKI’s Managing Director, said that the possibilities that Géminis offers, like its storage capacity or speed, are necessary to deal with our customers. “Half pay with cards –he said- and an infrastructure like Géminis is necessary to give them a fast, secure, quality service”. Aware of the importance of ICTs, he went on to add that “we cannot imagine any operations today without computers”.

Power and speed are key to the service offered by a DPC like Eroski’s, capable of dealing with a card payment made in Ceuta, for example, in less than three seconds. In that time, the transaction goes through a reader at the point of sale, is sent to a card authorisation centre belonging to the relevant banking institution and returns to the outlet.

With an autonomous electricity generation capacity, separate from the headquarters to ensure continuous service in the event of an incident, Eroski’s new DPC manages all the company’s information systems. To do this it has a latest generation technological platform which enables operations of different types to be carried out like credit card payments, storing and distributing the information Eroski needs on a day-to-day basis, or making back-up copies to ensure process continuity. And all this with the guarantee of 24-hour service every day of the year.

Obviously, the DPC has been equipped with the latest advances in terms of security, prevention and energy supply. As far as the first is concerned, as is usual in this type of centre, the building consists of different security zones depending on the use and level of protection required.

As for prevention, it has a novel fire detection and extinction system using nebulised water which ensures the integrity of the installation and minimises the risk to equipment and people, in addition to providing considerable savings in terms of maintenance. And power is supplied from two different locations to ensure supply is maintained at all times.
 

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