Evant claims that its Demand Planning and Replenishment software improves forecasting by offering better management of slow-moving goods.

The system is built on an open, Java 2.0 Enterprise edition-based Internet-services architecture to enable easy integration with other information systems.

The single system also offers a combined management package for distribution centres, regional centres and retail outlets.

Robert Lewis, Evant's chief executive, said the new version is based on the company's experiences of handling around 92 per cent of the pharmaceutical distributive supply chain market in the US.

He said international office stationery retailer Staples is set to implement Evant software across Europe after successfully using it across the Atlantic.

Lewis, who has spent five of the past eight years working in Europe, noted that UK retailers were much more focused than their US counterparts on the experience the consumer has in their stores.

This meant that solutions providers needed to give an increasing amount of real-time information on stock availability and replenishment times to shopfloor employees in the UK.

Dr Hau Lee, co-founder and founding scientist of Evant, said the increasing use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags meant an overload of information.

This means retailers will need exceptionally agile retail management systems that can accept the information and then turn it into useful data, according to Lee, who remains on the Evant board but is now also a professor at Stanford University.