Johannesburg, 12 Jun 2013
The Pick n Pay Group is one of Africa's largest and most consistently successful retailers of food, general merchandise and clothing. Today, the Pick n Pay Group has a total of 775 stores, made up of Hypermarkets, Supermarkets and Family Stores (which are franchise stores).
Pick n Pay employs over 42 000 people, and generates an annual turnover of R55.3 billion. With this type and size of organisation, Pick n Pay has recognised the inherent value of implementing a well-planned and defined ECM (enterprise content management) strategy. Pick n Pay looked to iFuture Consulting Services to assist it in developing and operationalising its ECM strategy.
iFuture embarked on this initiative by identifying some of the key business areas and undertook to understand their requirements. In parallel, investigation was done into the Pick n Pay IS technology strategy in order to determine which tool would be most applicable to enable this strategy. Based on the business case and requirements, the decision was made to utilise the Microsoft SharePoint platform to execute, enable and support the ECM initiative.
After the successful implementation of SharePoint 2010, and on release of the latest version, Duncan Rae, Head of Microsoft Architecture at PnP, had identified the value that Microsoft SharePoint 2013 offered in the delivery of the required functionality to the various business areas:
* Improved search capability;
* Improved social and community functionality;
* Enhanced and customisable permission handling and security control; and
* Improved document handling and routing.
The objective of the SharePoint implementation at PnP through a strategic roadmap was to provide a site architecture framework which forms the basis of the required business solutions. The SharePoint implementation roadmap will essentially provide the knowledge workers with document management, collaboration as well as search functionality. The implementation was guided by the information management policies and guidelines relevant to the business requirements. These information management policies and guidelines were a key deliverable to guide and inform the design as well as the implementation of the sites. A governance plan was also developed through this initial implementation. It was therefore decided as part of the ECM operationalisation process to upgrade the current SharePoint 2010 platform to SharePoint 2013. This has been done successfully.
"PnP has recognised through a SharePoint strategy that content, be it structured content from an ERP system, or unstructured content in the form of 'office' documents and collaborative content, requires management and safeguarding. SharePoint 2013 offers the ideal platform to leverage the diverse business requirements," says Barry Walker, Account Manager.
Paul Spagnoletti, Sales Director, adds that technology on its own is not the differentiator. It is through a well-understood business requirement, aligned to a technology strategy and roadmap, that makes the overall solution a success. iFuture as an organisation has built its success in the market through this ethos, that while the technology enabler is an important aspect to the solution, without the understanding of what we and the organisation are trying to achieve, the chances of success are hugely diminished.
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