Nisa-Today's is completely restructuring its IT systems, in
a project it describes as one of the most important ever undertaken
by the business.
The company, the UK's largest buying group for independent retail
and wholesale companies, has 450 retail and 331 wholesale members
with a combined annual turnover of £15bn. It is upgrading its
merchandising and supply chain systems to support rapid growth,
which has seen turnover grow by 800% since 1987.
The project, which aims to speed up the supply chain, improve the
quality of information sent out to members and increase their
profits, is vital to the future success of the organisation, said
John Schofield, group managing director of Nisa-Today's.
"This project represents a substantial investment for Nisa-Today's
and involves a lengthy implementation process that has already
begun," he said. "It is one of the most important decisions the
business has ever had to make and will impact on our entire
operation."
Nisa-Today's will replace its 15-year-old AS/400-based legacy
systems, with merchandising and distribution systems from software
supplier Retek and an order capture and processing system from
Enabler UK.
The new systems, which will integrate with each other and the
legacy systems with software from integration supplier SeeBeyond,
will vastly improve efficiency, said Wayne Swallow, head of IT at
Nisa-Today's.
"We have about 30 or 40 legacy systems meaning the IT team spends
most of its time supporting the various systems," said Swallow. "By
putting receiving orders, replenishment and sending out goods under
the same banner, we will see a massive return on investment."
To improve the information sent out to members on issues such as
merchandise and promotions, Nisa-Today's is rolling out an online
portal to support the new systems, Swallow said.
"A major barrier has been the way we can send out information -
much of it is in paper form - but we now aim to be very much
web-based," he said. "We want to be more visible to our members and
increasing accessibility will support that."
The overhaul of systems will not be easy but should bring a number
of benefits, said Tony Hart, managing analyst at research firm
Datamonitor.
"The challenges are going to include migrating existing systems,
data and processes to the new system and this will become difficult
when aiming to get a consistent view of all the data from multiple
parties," he said.
"In the long term, this will be beneficial in reducing the cost of
doing business, and increasing the visibility and transparency of
processes and inventories."