Relyant relies on Ixchange`s VizAbility to manage stock

Furniture and appliance retailer, the Relyant Retail Group, is to implement JSE-listed Ixchange`s strategic inventory management system, VizAbility, to improve stock level control in its Beares, Geen & Richards, Furniture City, Appliance City, Lubners, Savells and Fairdeal chains around the country.

VizAbility forms part of the Ability suite of business management solutions.

Relyant`s IT director, Doug Wishart, says the group decided to invest in inventory optimisation software to enable it to centralise and better control its inventory ordering and delivery systems, which are currently managed manually at branch level for each company in the group.

The branches will assist in forecasting, with the company using VizAbility to centrally determine the correct stock that needs to be delivered to branches across the country, ensuring that both normal sales and showroom stock is delivered in the correct quantity and at the right time. This, says Wishart, will prevent some stores running short of sale items while others are over-stocked.

Wishart says the group plans to implement a central stock control system across all the companies in the group to take further advantage of the economies of scale centralised stock control offers. This will enable the group to monitor the excesses and shortfalls.

"Consolidating their stock ordering process at the head-office, with forecasting input from the branches, will provide Relyant with a strong competitive advantage in terms of reducing stock levels, as well as reducing costs," says VizAbility`s general manager, Walter Leicher.

"VizAbility will provide the group with the ability to view its actual stock turnover figures, broken down to item level, enabling management to order goods that sell well and cut orders on slow-moving stock," adds Leicher.

According to Wishart, VizAbility will also improve Relyant`s supplier lead-time management, allowing management to build variances in delivery times into their safety stock levels.

The implementation of VizAbility will enforce a paradigm shift in the way the group orders stock. In the past, management would have ordered a fixed quantity of stock each time an order went through for a particular item. With the new system, management will be able to order the right amount of stock to serve its needs over a fixed period of time, moving the group from a quantity driven ordering system to a forecast driven system that is more in tune with changing market conditions.

VizAbility will be run on Windows NT and uses SQL Server 7 as its database of choice for the Relyant Retail Group chains. "With the proliferation of high-quality business solutions that address numerous market segments, SQL Server 7 has stepped up to take its place as the premier supporting database platform for these solutions," says David Sieff, developer marketing, Microsoft S.A.