 French
Connection
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French Connection are renowned as an innovative fashion designer
and retailer, and operate in both retail and wholesale markets.
FCUK designs, produces and distributes branded fashion clothing
for men and women to more than 30 countries around the world.
French Connection Group Plc operates under four principal brands,
the most significant of which is French Connection, accounting for
around 85% of global turnover. Other brands include the well-known
designer label, Nicole Farhi, a mail-order based ladies fashion
range, TOAST, and a fashion basics range, Great Plains. Although
the brands target different audiences they each generate high levels
of respect in their chosen markets reflecting the passion and skill
poured into the design and manufacture of the products.
Founded in 1969 by Chairman and Chief Executive Stephen Marks the
business has grown steadily to its current size. French Connection’s
long history of success has been based on the quality of the fashions,
supported by highly successful advertising and marketing for the
French Connection brand and the FCUK branding resulting in
one of the most highly recognised and respected clothing brands
in the UK.
The Problem
French Connection had previously operated a number of disparate,
legacy systems which suffered from a lack of data consistency and
reliability.
As a trend-driven fashion retailer, French Connection relies heavily
on the preferences of its customers to shape its design and manufacturing
processes for coming seasons. With the legacy systems that FCUK
had been using, a complete and integrated view of sales, stock,
and profits was largely unavailable. The excessive manual checking
required to collect store data had become extremely difficult to
manage and was highly unsuitable to French Connection’s needs.
The Solution
French Connection chose to become the first retailer in the UK
to implement SAP for Retail. The company recognised the benefits
that an integrated, process-oriented solution could deliver to their
stores.
Next, they determined the most important elements of the upgrade
to be a single view of stock, a single view of projected sales,
and the ability to have buying and retail operations on the same
page.
The Choice
French Connection selected SAP to help them meet these key goals
for financial and retail management and to replace existing systems,
based upon the high value proposition of SAP for Retail.
CIBER Novasoft worked with SAP to design, configure and implement
both financial and retail management modules, integrating them with
legacy Wholesale Management and Point Of Sale systems. CIBER Novasoft
also delivered data migration routines to automatically transfer
product and inventory data into SAP for Retail, and open items into
accounts receivable and payable.
CIBER Novasoft was able to meet the challenging goal of implementing
the first SAP for Retail system in the UK in just six months.
The Benefits
CIBER Novasoft hold up the FCUK project as an example of what can
be achieved through commitment and determination.
Colin Vickery, SAP Retail Consultancy Manager states, “Together
with CIBER Novasoft and French Connection, we delivered a working
solution for a large and complex business in a timescale not normally
associated with a project of this scope.”
Roy Tomlinson, Managing Director of CIBER Novasoft UK says, “The
French Connection project proves that organisations can be both
pragmatic and professional in the implementation of large SAP projects
which impact many areas of their business. At French Connection,
we proved that it is possible to respond to the need to deliver
a complex and business critical solution in a relatively short period
of time.”
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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