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As a part of Aditya Birla Nuvo, an AV Birla Group company, Madura Garments is the name behind leading fashion brands like Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Peter England, Byford, Elements and SF Jeans. And if thats not enough, the company is also a preferred global supplier of international brands like Marks & Spencer, Tommy Hilfiger, Polo, and Ralph Lauren. The group is also involved on the retail front, distributing the brands through its retail chain Planet Fashion and Trouser Town.

Last year, the company decided to bifurcate its business into two divisionsretail and trade (where large orders are booked directly by customers). It was looking for a comprehensive retail solution and decided to implement Oracles Retek, in November last year. What is especially significant and unique is that for the first time in the world, Retek and SAP (used in the wholesale business) have been interfaced with each other, says NP Singh, senior vice president and CIO, textiles and apparel business, Aditya Birla Group.

For deploying Retek a team of fifteen members from various departments was formed. Retek has been rolled out in forty Allen Solly stores with plans to deploy the solution in all Louis Philippe and Van Heusen stores by March end this year. The Retek solution assists retail merchandise management, allocation of stock to store, setting up promotion, and merchandise, item, and demand planning.

NP Singh,  senior vice president and CIO, textiles and apparel business, Aditya Birla Group

Retek rolled out in forty Allen Solly stores with plans to deploy the solution in all Louis Philippe and Van Heusen stores by March end this year Considering Retek has not been deployed in Indian retail businesses so far, finding a system integrator partner equipped with the right skills to implement the solution was a challenge

Whats important to note is that Retek is being interfaced with SAP for financial transaction posting as Retek does not have a financial module. Therefore, whats happening is that at the end of the day, data pertaining to sales and stocks get transferred to SAP for financial analysis and report generation. All expenses pertaining to stores are also directly entered in the SAP system, says Singh.

Challenges
Considering that Retek has not been deployed in Indian retail businesses so far, finding a system integrator partner equipped with the right skills to implement the solution was a challenge. Moreover, without a finance module for Retek, interfacing with SAP was also a tough task.

The most critical challenge for the company was dealing with change management in terms of processes, user training and ownership. Since the trade business was accounted for in SAP, the retail business was now being done in Retek. Thus the users had to learn to adopt and own the new ERP solution, says Singh.

While Retek has been implemented at the back-end, it has been interfaced with Shoper from Tally Solutions in the front-end. For Peter England People stores, Retek has been interfaced with a front-end called 360 Commerce. For retail analytics, Madura is using Retek which has a data warehouse called RDW and a presentation layer known as Micro Strategy. Meanwhile, the financial analytics is being done out of SAP by using Business Information Warehouse (BIW).

In the future, we plan to use Cognos which would extract data from RDW and BIW, adds Singh.

Post deployment of Retek, retail data is easily available in real-time allowing users to take informed and faster decisions. Real-time visibility of data ensures that users plan and set up promotions online, thereby helping increase sales. Since data comes at the end of the day, data collation and analysis leading to report generation could only be done the next day. With Retek, data is available immediately, helping stock movement and sell-through as it enables the people to see the buying patterns, meaning whats in demand and whats not, says Singh.

Stuti Das
stutid@cybermedia.co.in

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