I wanted to share a success story of a retailer who is famous convenience store with some of the stores also having gas stations. They also have in the store a fresh food facility which allows customer to order fresh prepared food like sandwiches etc. It has about 562 retail outlets, three distribution centers and located across five states in the United States. They have over 15,000 employees and serve more than 300 million customers each year. The key business drivers for implementing SAP were:
- Foodservice Management
- Store Order Management
- Information Management
- Category Management
- Cost Management
Why SAP?
The selection of SAP was one step in a milestone transformation to upgrade its IT systems to the latest technology and gear its business for continuing growth. Based on the SAP NetWeaver (TM) platform, SAP for Retail provides a business foundation to simplify employees' jobs, while achieving the Company's strategic goals. SAP for Retail addresses the demand for efficient processes, integrated applications and administrative cost management. SAP's financials and merchandise solutions present with an integrated business platform to upgrade operations and realize a number of critical benefits, including elimination of costs and system redundancies and gaining leading functionality for the convenience industry
Scope
This was an an implementation to…
- help build the tactical and strategic
application foundation the enterprise - improve process integration
- reduce the number of legacy systems
The program was separated in two phases, Phase I focused on the core financials processes and Phase II focused on the core retail processes. The blueprint for both was done in Phase I itself.
SAP Modules Scope
- IS Retail
- Business Warehouse (BW)
- Exchange Infrastructure (XI)
- Financials (FI)
- Retail Store
- Advanced Forecasting and Replenishment
- Materials Management (MM)
- POS Data Management
- Merchandise and Assortment Planning
- Solution Manager
- InfoPak
Challenges
- 100% Ramp-Up Software with
- Extremely Complex Scope achieved thru Ramp Up Software. Very, Very Large and Diverse Team and Highly Democratic Client Culture.
- Premier Lighthouse Retail Account with Enormous Potential for SILO development and configuration.
- There were business process challenges which were because of Convenient Store with complex business practices
- Most stores open 24/7 Specialized processes for articles like donuts, coffee, etc.
- Challenges in inventory management and financial accountability attributed to business rules dictated by the client
- Complexity of integration across various SAP application (Retail, BW, F&R, Portals, XI)
- Several legacy applications that needed data and communication driving interfaces from SAP to other applications
- + 200 RICEF Objects
- RF/ADC: Lack of standard offering and incompatibility of pre chosen hardware to Web/Dynpro Java applications
Getting It Done
- One Team rather than Us vs Them
- SAP and customer working together to come up with the best solution for their business
- SAP Team Leads acting with Limited PMO Authority
- Project sub teams working cohesively with each other and ensuring processes were seamless across application areas
- SAP/AG & SAP North America working together thru various Ramp Up issues
- Client’s commitment to participating within PMO
- Full team meeting once a week
- Project Management delegation regarding functional touch points
- SAP Consultants/3rd Party meeting once per week
- Monthly Team Building exercises
- Daily/Weekly functional meetings
- Daily PMO (SAP/Customer) meeting
- Client’s commitment to training and Change Management
- Customer team members were freed from their “day job” and dedicated solely to the project
- Client sponsors embraced the reasons for going with the ramp up versions of the applications and risks associated with it
- Escalation teams working to resolve issues by giving this project high priority and working on the solutions globally
- Visibility and support given during Ramp-Up
- The support and focus of SAP top management
Overall a very successfuly projects and something for which the whole team is very proud of.
