International Retail Fashion Focus (IRFF) has launched a wholesale restructure of its IT systems and has contracted MIP Consulting to project-manage the operation.
IRFF, a large fashion retail group, comprises the John Orr, Scotts, Spitz, Perl Modes, Kids First, Maxmara, Hemmingways, Deans, Levisons, and Escada retail chains. It has 259 retail outlets throughout South Africa and is part of the JSE-listed ESIC group of companies.
"As a result of our acquisition drive of the past few years, including the purchase of Scotts, several different point-of-sale (POS) and back-office software applications are in use at store level, giving head office a real headache," says Darren Smith, IRFF group information manager. "Many of these applications are not Year 2000-compliant. In addition, some stores have debtors books, while others, such as Scotts, are cash-based businesses."
The first step will be to have everyone running on the same software and to ensure that these are Year 2000-compliant. The group has appointed MIP Consulting to undertake an evaluation of the current status and to project manage any implementation needed.
"By consolidating all its systems, IRFF will achieve Y2K compliancy and improved customer service," says Don Elliott, director of MIP Consulting.
"The unified structure will provide decision support information to the organisation, with everyone working off the same set of numbers in an intuitive environment. It will also reduce the number of IT service providers with which IRFF interfaces."
After considering many options and an extensive cost benefits exercise, IRFF has decided to continue with its strategic use of internal IT resources. "We believe organisations will never enjoy the dedication and control they would like to have over their information systems if they don`t manage them internally," says Smith. "A goal is to do things faster, cheaper and smarter. There`s an international trend to over-capitalise on IT. We intend to run our IT department at 1% of turnover compared to the industry standard of 2,5%. We`ll call in external help as and when required."
Scotts` SSS POS and Open RSA merchandising and order processing applications have been chosen as the group standard while John Orrs` bespoke debtors application will be rewritten by Dovetail Business Solutions. The POS system will be enhanced to the requirements of the rest of the group and all relevant interfaces will be written in-house.
The systems will run on a mixture of Windows NT and SCO Unix on Dell and Corollary servers with Oracle as the database and DOS-based POS workstations.
"We`re putting an IT framework in place that will enable the future growth of the group. We believe we now have the right base from which to build really smart applications," says Smith.
"Key opportunities are open to us now including the introduction of a group buying card to enable customers of one chain to buy on account at another," he adds. "We need a unified IT infrastructure to do that. We`re also considering various loyalty card schemes. We`re already planning a big data warehousing and merchandise planning project."
The restructuring project began in April and should be completed by the end of September.
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