 Booker
Cash & Carry
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Formerly part of the Big Food Group and now owned by a group of
venture capital companies and the Icelandic group, Baugur, Booker
has 32% of the UK cash and carry and collect market. It also supplies
independent retailers and caterers and runs its own Symbol group,
Premier Stores, with 2,000 stores.
The company claims to touch 95% of the population, all within a
15 minute drive time of its 173 sites.
The Problem
Chris Mangham, IT Director for Booker Cash & Carry, says, “It’s
a volatile market, so we wanted to ensure we were providing the
best possible service to our customers. However, our existing systems
were no longer adequate to this task. The cost of ownership was
high for existing legacy systems and important functions such as
differential pricing and customer segmentation were not available
on old platforms.”
Mangham adds, “We had made a pledge to our customers: ‘We
want to make it easy for you to do business with us.’ In order
to fulfil this pledge, we needed to use systems that would enable
us to offer customers low prices.”
Existing systems were mainframe based, with various islands of
information which meant that there was no central data repository.
The Solution
The company was well aware that the move to new systems would involve
a massive change programme because the projects would involve switching
over core systems, primarily Master Data.
In addition, Booker had a range of different customers with different
requirements, including independent retailers, retailer members
and catering customers. Booker therefore required a robust solution
that could be tailored to meet its needs. SAP was regarded as the
most flexible solution. “We were mindful of the fact that
customising software to fit your own requirements is expensive.
It was therefore crucial that the original design was right for
the business. We looked for a partner that could help us get things
right the first time.”
Booker chose to implement Articles, Customer Relationship Management,
Vendor & Site views, Listing, Pricing and Promotions, and amended
the existing financial footprint to be compatible with the new functionality.
Booker also upgraded to SAP 4.7 as part of the project. SAP Portals
were introduced, providing a platform for communication between
the branches, enhancing visibility, and providing access to messaging,
new processes and training materials.
The Choice
Booker trawled the market for integration partners among the tier
one vendors and settled on CIBER Novasoft after a three month search.
Mangham says, “We chose CIBER Novasoft because they are dedicated
to retail, uncompromised by commitments in other sectors, flexible,
close and experienced. They were also able to
demonstrate flexibility in terms of processes and people. And by
processes, I mean that they did not try to make us do things their
way.”
The project had a number of distinct challenges that the project
team had to face and overcome. This was a large scale project with
a wide-ranging scope. CIBER Novasoft managed the implementation
by phasing the delivery as much as it could. Much of the new infrastructure
was put in as early as possible to help manage and spread the risk.
Where the project team could break up the functionality it did so.
This also enabled the company to test the applications across the
new infrastructure in smaller, less risky projects.
The Benefits
CIBER Novasoft and Booker managed one of the largest SAP retail
implementations in the UK. Since its completion, Booker has become
an SAP Center of Excellence.
The Master Data project went live on schedule on June 6th 2005,
to time and budget, in what proved to be one of the most extensive
SAP migrations in the UK. The whole process went very smoothly.
The project group was kept in place to ensure that regular communications
went out to the business to reinforce the benefits that the new
system was delivering.
With the master data platform now fully functional and claimed
by Booker to be even more stable than they had expected, the company
now plans greater automation of orders and billing for national
accounts. Their goal is to continue to improve customer service.
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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