> Retailsoft
Client Overview
Client organisation was founded in 1931 and today it is one of the largest retail chains in Africa. The company retails clothing and food through its chain of 200+ corporate stores and franchisees across Africa and the Middle East. They are well known for their innovation and quality and considered as a highly reputed organisation.
Engagement Overview |
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Client: |
One of the largest retail chains in Africa |
Industry |
Retail |
Project Start Date |
2005 |
Project End Date/ Status |
2006. Ongoing Support |
Project Locations |
55 Store locations across 12 countries in Africa and Middle East |
Number of current Users |
POS: 500+ Back Office: 100+ |
ID Team Size |
Implementation : Onsite- 04 Offshore- 08 |
Technology Stack
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Oracle9i & 10g, MSDE, Oracle Forms & Reports, MS SQL Express, VB, IBM MQ Series Hardware: IBM Intel Servers, IBM Sure One, DigiPoS, Symbol barcode readers and scanners, Symbol PDT, Zebra ticket printer, MS Terminal Server |
Integration |
Oracle Apps, Credit Management System, Interface to mobile solutions(Stock Take, Warehouse management System) |
Client’s IT scenario before ID association
Franchisees of client were using different IT systems to manage their retail activities and this heterogenous environment lead to incompatibility between client’s and the franchisees’ IT applications. Most of the franchisee’s applications were not robust enough or integrated with critical modules such as financials. They were also facing difficulties concerning the stability and high availability of the applications. Very low levels of automation of business functions involved high levels of human interventions, errors and costs. These shortcomings were severely hampering the operational efficiency of the franchisees and the client.
Why/How ID was chosen
Client was scouting for an ideal product that could be used uniformly by all of the franchisees and came to know about Retailsoft's efficiency from a franchisee in Dubai, who was using it with utmost satisfaction. After a rigorous and thorough evaluation of all the options available to them, the company chose Retailsoft for the following key differentiators
- Distributed nature of the architecture of Retailsoft
- Centralised inventory & financials
- ID’s rich project delivery experience in African countries
- ID’s immense functional knowledge in the Retail domain
- Capabilities to ramp up/allocate resources swiftly to implement solution in record time
ID Solution- Retailsoft
ID provides its client with a customized mix of Retailsoft modules that ideally suit the needs of the business. The modules that are integrated for the retail chain are
- Point of Service
- Merchandising
- Customer Management
- Financials
- Inventory
- Credit Sales
- Lay by
- Loyalty
- Promotions
Implementation/Installation Challenges
- Migration of historical data from different legacy systems of the franchisees
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Infrastructure limitations in terms of providing high performance networking/connectivity to store locations
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Deployment of back office application to stores through low bandwidth telecom carrier
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Localisation of solution to suit different countries of Africa & Middle East
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Integration with HQ systems at different process level interfaces
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Language barriers leading to challenges in training and other practical operational activities
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Collaborating with numerous stakeholders such as Principals, Franchisees, Vendors, to complete implementation in a timely fashion
Client Benefits
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Seamless integration with HQ systems at different process levels such as stock replenishment helps client and the franchisees to operate very efficiently
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Consolidated view of business critical items such as sales, inventory, etc across all the stores gives clients and its franchisees a very broad look and the required insights to take the right decisions
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Robust solution with multiple modules addressing all business functions have automated the franchisees operations to very high levels thus substantially reducing the amount of human intervention, errors, time and cost
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Provides smart tools to analyse dead stocks, top sellers, best sellers helping franchises and the client to take appropriate action
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Near-Zero maintenance, thus optimising IT spend and ongoing excellent customer support ensures high levels of performance and availability