Retail panacea for Provogue

Provogue is a fashion and lifestyle retail business company owned by Provogue India, a public company listed on the Bombay and National Stock Exchange. Provogue was developed and launched in 1998 as a menswear fashion range and is now available through its chain of exclusive brand outlets called ‘Provogue Studio’ at 140 locations which provides a unique retail environment for customers. It is also retailed through selective stores in the country and leading departmental stores like Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Globus, Westside, Central to name a few. Provogue’s products are made available through more than 350 doors across 73 cities pan-India.

The company operates out of its corporate headquarters in Mumbai, branch offices in various cities in India and international office in Hong Kong. It has 2 factories—one in Daman (UT) and the other in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh.

PROVOGUEÂ’S PROCESSES AND PAIN AREAS

Provogue procures clothing and accessories from its parent company and third-party vendors. The inven tories sell through their chain of stores. The company does bulk breaking, following which, retail-specific packaging is done. The prices are dynamic in this industry, so specific packaging units engage in retail-specific packaging.

Price is a crucial aspect and the company had to address it diligently. For instance, during the MRP pro duct pur chases, they had to address dynamic price change that is taken care at the time of making the purchase order. Also, during the goods receipts, the number of line item was very high that was addressed through scanning barcode—either they enter the quantity or by scanning that many times.

Considering the company had outlets across the country, it engaged in state-wise localization. Furthemore, the replenishment of the products had to be vendor-specific, so this factor had to be addressed too.

DEAL SEALED

In order to streamline its processes, Provogue decided to implement ERP solutions at its end. For the same, the order was given to SEAL Infotech. During evaluation, Provogue team asked for detailed demo of the product from all the bidding vendors. They spent almost 3 months to get in to the nitty-gritty of each product. SEAL along with SAP India team demonstrated all the applicable features for Provogue business and they finally opted for SAP for its retail business solution which was developed for the IS retail industry.

"“Over the years, SEAL Infotech has carved out a niche for itself in the retail industry solutions on SAP platform. SEAL Infotech has certified solutions by SAP India as well as SAP America, which gave the solution provider advantage over its competitors,"” said Gopal Saphru, head, business development, Seal Infotech.

IMPLEMENTATION OVERVIEW

The implementation of SAP IS Retail solution for Provogue comprised study of current business pro cesses and the legacy system functionality. It followed the Accelerated SAP (ASAP) methodology prescribed by SAP which has phases like project preparation, business blue print, realization, final preparation and cut-over planning, go-live and post go-live support.

SEAL Infotech deployed the SAP solution SAP ECC IS-Retail 6.0 along with the SAP modules such as sales and distribution, material management, finance and controlling.

IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES

The ERP solution had to cover all the aspects of trade and transactions as the company dealt with all MRP and non-MRP articles. Numerous reports had to be generated at each level which even included any goods movement. With every goods movement, related reports had to be updated at the same time.

The company generated high number of purchases/goods receipts during the beginning and the end of every month. Incorporating this into the solution was not a difficult job but the price changes during purchase as well as sales are very dynamic and providing related tweaks was the challenging part. Furthermore, integration of existing outlets through POS software at the front-end (at stores) and SAP IS-Retail as the back-end was challenging, as it had to be synchronized and streamlined.

Another pain area was to develop application for vendor price management, which had a purchase order screen to address the vendor-wise article-wise price change and control on the same. Following this, was the task to develop user-friendly screen for goods receipt since the company deals in a number of line items per goods receipt. Another challenge was regarding MRP, wherein while doing the Goods Received Note (GRN) the MRP will get updated if the MRP is changed. The new MRP will flow to POS which is per SAPÂ’s standard.

Bulk breaking is another critical requirement where articles are procured in bulk quantities and re-packed into different UoM and maintained in the inventory at the outlets for the end-user sales. Another critical hurdle was to include state-specific taxation during imports and TDS calculations for certain vendors. "“At a broader level, the SEAL Infotech team had to understand the procedures and process of the retail operation of the company that are unique. Finally, the challenge was to plan and execute knowledge transfer schedules and training programs to the end-users, as IT literacy and understanding of ERP concept were low among users,"” said Saphru.

POST-DEPLOYMENT BENEFITS

ERP solution provided the company an easy way of creating purchase order with the buyer ensuring that the new price is addressed while taking into account the last price at which the article was purchased. With this solution in place, the company now has a proper maintenance of master data to address the requirement of management of Provogue.

It enabled a system wherein different pricing to address the different market segment was made possible. Also, goods receipt now does not take much time due to automation of inward process. Above all, the retail solution offered automatic schedule POS data flow into SAP and automatic updates on reports of any goods movement.

At managerial level, the solution provided the company with detailed price analysis. The system is such that vendor-wise as well article wise analysis was made possible at the time of purchase order Product management became efficient as faster good receipt screen were made available through barcode scanning. Also, replenishment planning for the sorted articles at store level is now a smooth process. Along with the retail part, implementation was also done for manufacturing, corporate office (HO) for assets, services and imports procurement. This provided the entire planning activity to be monitored and managed at micro level. A unique solution was deployed to cover value only articles where the inventory was maintained by the vendor, which reduced inventory hassles and made stock management more efficient.

SEAL INFOTECHÂ’S ACHIEVEMENT

This implementation project was completed within 6 months for the first store and subsequent roll-outs were done to all their stores in a phased manner. The migrations to stores were smooth. SEAL Infotech has also helped Provogue to upgrade their POS to be able to be compatible with SAP, and the company did not have to make any investment in a new POS.