 Uniqlo
Uniqlo and CIBER Novasoft
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Fast Retailing UK (FRUK) is the UK division of Fast Retailing Co.
which trades on the high street as UNIQLO, and has established itself
over the last 15 years as a hugely successful clothing retailer
in Japan. UNIQLO’s success has been based on selling modern
clothing styles at extremely competitive prices, by sourcing supply
in China and the Far East.
Fast Retailing is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has been
one of the best performing Japanese retailers with over 500 stores
across Japan. The company recorded a turnover of £2.4 billion
and net profit of £341 million from September till August
2001 and has over 20,000 employees.
UNIQLO is something of a phenomenon in Japan. Since opening its
first store in Hiroshima in 1984 it has grown to become the country's
leading clothing retailer, offering functional and contemporary
clothing for men, women and children at accessible prices. The UK
was its first foray outside Japan.
The Problem
As UNIQLO continued to grow domestically, it saw the value of expanding
into new markets. The UK was one of the first foreign markets where
UNIQLO sought to establish itself, with a similar selling proposition
to that which had proved successful in Japan.
FRUK was set up late in 2000 for this purpose, with plans to begin
trading after nine months and to open a total of 5 stores by the
end of the following year.
In order to support the expansion and new business, a systems infrastructure
had to be created that could handle the complexity of the operation
while allowing for future growth. It was also critical that the
infrastructure be implemented within the tight timescales the company
had decided upon.
The systems UNIQLO had used in Japan were mainly home grown, and
were therefore not very suited to the UK operation. FRUK chose to
adopt a package approach in order to achieve implementation of a
working set of systems as rapidly and cost effectively as possible.
The Solution
At an early stage in the UK planning process, SAP Retail was selected
by Fast Retailing as the ideal platform to fuel rapid growth in
the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
Rather than the usual growth pattern of starting with a small system
and building or replacing as the business develops, UNIQLO had the
vision and resources to invest in a full-scale solution from the
start. "We've actually begun with a system suited to a much
larger company," explains Simon Thomas, IT & Logistics
Director for UNIQLO, "But it's a system that we know will support
our end growth target and beyond."
The SAP Retail system will also enable strategic decision making
to take place by integrating financial and business performance
information with management processes. While it is rare to have
this scale of SAP implementation in a fledgling business, UNIQLO
has invested in its business systems ahead of future growth.
The Choice
Simon Thomas, IT & Logistics Director for UNIQLO, said, “We
chose CIBER Novasoft because they understand the retail sector and
the every day issues we face in running our business. They could
provide practical advice in creating systems efficiencies and most
importantly for us they are adept at fast implementations.”
Roy Tomlinson, CIBER Novasoft Managing Director, added, “CIBER
Novasoft specialises in the retail sector, so with this implementation
we were able to bring our experience from working with retailers
such as French Connection, B&Q, Kwiksave and The Big Food Group
to the fore. We have again demonstrated that rapid implementations
and ROI are now an everyday occurrence.”
The Benefits
CIBER Novasoft completed the implementation at UNIQLO within six
months, at which point the company was already beginning to see
benefits. SAP Financials and HR were among the first elements to
be utilised.
Thomas says, “Normally when you open a store you have to
phone up to find out what they've sold. On the first day we had
a full breakdown of sales and total visibility of stock - which
is particularly vital to us.”
The company is now focusing on additional areas to make full use
of SAP Retail functionality, and in particular Real Estate and Recruitment
as their nation-wide chain continues to grow. “SAP Retail
gives you everything,” says Thomas. “It's up to you
how you use it.”
The UK is vital to UNIQLO as the launch-pad for a major ongoing
expansion programme into other markets. And with the current rate
of success, UNIQLO and SAP Retail will be setting the trends for
years to come.
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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