 Halfords
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With a company history spanning more than a century, more than
400 stores across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
and 12,000 product lines, Halfords is the leading car accessory
and cycle retailer in the UK.
Halfords was acquired by CVC Venture Capital Partners from The
Boots Company in August 2002. The new owners immediately set about
transforming Halfords’ business systems and key processes
to ensure that resources were focused on delivering a first class
in-store offer for its customers.
The Problem
Halfords’ existing systems were not well equipped to handle
the current business, which had grown rapidly over 10 years and
urgently required a major investment. It had suffered from a general
lack of investment in IT in the years leading up to its sale by
The Boots Company.
Brian Scott, Halfords Head of Business Systems, explains, “The
Boots mainframe on which all core Halfords systems ran was effectively
a burning platform that had to be replaced with some urgency. While
Boots granted us a reasonable transitional period, we were completely
dependent on their technology.”
The existing platform was geared to manage a much smaller entity
than the company Halfords had become in recent times. It was not
flexible or scalable and the various processes ran on different
systems that were not sufficiently integrated. Moreover, it was
only capable of handling the brick and mortar business, while Halfords
internet business was growing rapidly. The systems also had little
or no multi-currency capabilities. In short, as Scott explains,
“We were land-locked and channel-locked.”
Because the existing systems were not well-integrated, it was difficult
to use data from different sources to make business decisions about
merchandising, range planning, space allocation, or to dynamically
measure store, item or promotional performance.
The Solution
Despite the pressure to exit the Boots mainframe, Halfords understood
the link between pace and risk and were not focused solely on a
fast implementation. Halfords Business Development Director Nick
Wharton said, “We wanted to make sure the new processes were
fully and accurately mapped. SAP is like a 60-room mansion. You
redecorate and move in as you go a room at a time, rather than try
to refurbish everything at once; this is the approach we took with
SAP and we were supported in this thinking by CIBER Novasoft.”
Halfords began implementing SAP in their HR department, then moved
onto finance, followed by category management and store replenishment,
and concluded with distribution centre replenishment. Halfords also
deployed SAP’s business warehouse for business intelligence
in stages at each milestone.
The Choice
Wharton explains, “We wanted a lead partner who would fit
with our business style and provide strategic consultancy, implementation
skills and resources, as well as strong retail understanding. We
considered many combinations of vendors until we settled on CIBER
Novasoft, realising that they fit the bill and would enable us to
benefit from their existing SAP experience with other major retailers.”
He adds, “We were aware of CIBER Novasoft’s reputation
as SAP implementation experts with an ability to bridge the gap
between ‘system speak’ and ‘business speak’.
This gave us confidence that they would be business focused and
remove much of the learning curve for us.”
“Everyone we met was knowledgeable and approachable. They
did not appear as a big consultancy house. They provided excellent
support during the buying process, and always found time to build
a relationship with us. There was a good cultural fit between the
two organisations.”
The Benefits
Alison Vasey, Business Process Manager for Halfords, is clear that
the transformation of Halfords’ systems has had a strategic
impact on Halfords’ business. “CIBER Novasoft’s
input has enabled the company to maintain and boost profitability,
and to get itself into good shape. With the growing threat of competition
from supermarkets, these systems are enabling us to support the
business in terms of merchandising, pricing and promotions.”
Replenishment to stores has been improved, ensuring that the right
products are available at the right time. Double digit sales growth
was maintained across the business despite the distraction of new
systems being implemented.
Brian Scott adds, “The cost of IT has been lowered significantly,
by over £1 million to date, despite the fact that our new
systems are delivering much higher benefits. With a solid systems
backbone now in place, we are now in a position to make further
improvements across the business.”
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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