February 11, 2007 in Philippine Star US RETAIL GIANT SAFEWAY RELIES ON PHILIPPINE SUBSIDIARY FOR IT SUPPORT. To maintain its advantage in a highly-competitive industry, US retail giant Safeway Inc. relies heavily on technology. Today, Safeway runs around 479 different software-based systems, with development and application support done in the US, Canada and the Philippines. Safeway Philtech is a fully-owned subsidiary of Safeway Inc. and functions as a Technology Center, providing application support and software development based on specifications from Safeway’s internal IT department. The company also provides maintenance and support services to Safeway’s user community. These involve remediating problems that occur for systems, applications and programs currently in production. “We are involved in virtually every area at Safeway like logistics, distribution, point-of-sale (POS), retail, marketing and back-end support for HR and accounting, among others. We are absolutely mission-critical to Safeway’s operations right now,” says Francis Mariano, General Manager at Safeway Philtech, Inc. Safeway operates more than 1,800 stores across the US and Canada. The company runs a wide variety of technology platforms: from Web to mainframe, from COBOL to Java. Currently development and support of these systems is done in the US, Canada and by Safeway Philtech in the Philippines. “The talent is here – people are very driven and very focused on the technical aspect of it. Also, culturally, the Philippines is very compatible with North America. That’s a very big factor as well.” Established some three years ago, Safeway Philtech currently employs about 300 workers in its offices at RCBC Tower located at the Makati Central Business District. Describing the nature of Safeway’s operations, Mariano said that, as compared to the local retail industry, the US is much more sophisticated in terms of customer requirements. Thus, Safeway Philtech plays a significant role in making sure Safeway’s core business operations runs smoothly in all of its stores. “There are what we call Severity 1 issues that need to be resolved within four hours,” Mariano points out. “If an order cannot be processed, if customers cannot pay for example, we make sure that these issues are resolved as soon as possible.” Majority of the work at Safeway Philtech is on application support but the company is looking forward to growing its software development team. “One of our focus areas for growth this year is to grow our development team. That’s really collaboration between a team in the US with our own team here,” he says. “The projects picked are conceptualized in the US to respond to business needs. That’s largely dictated by customer requirements.” Safeway Philtech has local project managers handling multiple projects for running different software platforms, and are able to bring significant cost-savings to Safeway’s operations, not to mention the excellent quality of its deliverables. “We are already there and we are doing it – but we have an appetite to do more,” Mariano says. About Safeway Philtech Safeway Philtech Inc. was established in 2003 as a fully owned subsidiary of Safeway Holdings Inc. Safeway Philtech is the Technology Center of retail giant Safeway Inc. About Safeway Inc. Safeway Inc. operates close to 1,800 stores across US and North America, including those by subsidiaries Vons in Southern California and Nevada, Randall’s and Tom Thumb stores in Texas, Genaurdi’s stores in Philadelphia and Carr’s stores in Alaska. Traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Safeway Inc. is a Fortune 50 company with annual sales of US$38.4 billion in 2005.