 Alpha
Retail
Alpha Retail takes off with SAP from
CIBER Novasoft
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Alpha Retail is part of Alpha Airports Group Plc, one of the world’s
largest independent aviation support companies.
Alpha Retail is the leading UK supplier of retailing and catering
services for airports. Its principal retail outlets are Alpha Airport
Shopping, which offers high quality consumer brands including fragrance,
skincare and branded accessories, World News, a confectionary, tobacco
and newspaper offer, and Glorious Britain, a successful destination
gifts concept.
Internationally, the company has Tax & Duty Free stores as
far afield as Florida and the Maldives, a network of flight kitchens
in four continents, a strategic partner in Sri Lanka, a distributor
in Cochin, and retail bar and restaurant outlets in Stockholm, Jersey
and Jordan.
The Problem
Group IT Director, Martin Cook, explains why Alpha Retail decided
to commission new IT systems.
“As a business, we were looking to develop much stronger relationships
with our key business partners – both suppliers and landlords.
Our knowledge and insight into our own sales performance, ranges
and store profiles from our legacy solutions was poor, and was preventing
Alpha from adding extra value to our partner relationships.”
“We had an ageing systems infrastructure, and store and head
office systems were not integrated. Maintenance and support costs
were rising for a system that was built for a smaller business than
we had become.
In short, what we had in place did not allow us to expand or deliver
the benefits from our new business model, which was to manage our
business more centrally.”
The goal therefore was to build systems that would enable major
business change and transform relationships as well as meet the
demands of the changing market. Cook explains, “We are not
like retailers in the high street because spending at airports is
largely discretionary. We are competing for the passengers’
pound and need to swap administrative tasks in the store for more
active selling, including trials, innovative merchandising and promotions.”
The Solution
CIBER Novasoft implemented a full-scale SAP Retail solution to
give Alpha Retail tighter control of its retail outlets and to introduce
new operational processes to the business that it could not achieve
with its legacy applications.
The entire SAP Retail solution was integrated with Alpha Retail’s
EPoS systems with Chip & PIN, and with mobile handheld terminal
(HHT) applications for fast scanning, picking, receiving and stock
taking in the stores. IRIS also makes extensive use of SAP’s
Warehouse Management, Forecasting & Replenishment, Finance,
XI and Business Warehouse solutions.
The Choice
Alpha Retail chose CIBER Novasoft to implement SAP because of its
experience at retailers including Halfords, B&Q and Direct Wines.
Cook says, “We chose CIBER Novasoft because they were able
to accelerate the whole process by deploying elements of its fast-track
SAP solution, novaRetail, which includes pre-configured templates
of classic retail functions, saving us the time and cost of new
development.”
novaRetail, a ready-made software solution for small to medium-sized
retailers, is based on SAP for Retail, and was used to accelerate
the traditional blueprinting phase and store pilots.
The Benefits
Alpha Retail is now managing stocks centrally with optimised replenishment
and stock levels based on actual sales polled in near real-time
from the stores. Before, Alpha Retail’s stock levels were
based upon locally generated orders from each store. Stores are
now holding stock for less time.
Central category teams now have the ability to analyse key sales
performance indicators in near real-time and identify problem lines.
Range changes or ordering parameters can be amended quickly, helping
to assure the availability of lines in the right place, at the right
time and in the right quantity.
Administration in the stores has been reduced and this is clearly
driving sales, with re-investment in active selling.
Cook added, “In addition, our negotiations with suppliers
and customers have improved because we have better insight into
what goods sell well, where and when. This gives us added value
when we are competing for tenancies.”
About CIBER Novasoft UK
CIBER Novasoft is a leading SAP consultancy providing world-wide
support for a range of high profile clients in the retail sector.
We have maintained our reputation as the world's leading SAP Retail
implementation partner ever since being the first partner to implement
SAP Retail when it was launched in 1996.
CIBER Novasoft’s success in the UK has been built on the
retail industry’s main priority today: integration of systems,
data and processes to provide a seamless retail management and customer
experience across multiple channels. Our customers include numerous
high profile brand names such as The Big Food Group, B&Q, Direct
Wines, Dunelm Mill, French Connection, Goldsmiths, and Halfords.
CIBER Novasoft is part of CIBER, Inc. (NYSE: CBR), a leading international
systems integration consultancy providing superior value-priced
services to both private and government sector clients. CIBER’s
global delivery services are offered on a project or strategic staffing
basis, in both custom and enterprise resource planning (ERP) package
environments, and across all technology platforms, operating systems
and infrastructures. CIBER serves client businesses from over 60
U.S. offices, 20 European offices and four offices in Asia, operates
in
18
countries with
8,500
employees, and has an annual revenue of more than
approximately $1.2 billion
million. CIBER is included in the Russell 2000 Index and the S&P
Small Cap 600 Index.
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