The Situation
As a shopping destination, Farmers Trading Company has stood the test of time, with 55 department stores and 8 home centres providing a great dose of retail therapy New Zealand wide. Farmers has been quick to move with shopping trends, revitalising the retail experience at store level, but they were playing catch up with their IT operations. Predominantly mainframe based, there were too many platforms, including outdated ones, and a lack of coherence between disparate adhoc applications was causing a roadblock where there should be a highway.
The Pain
Farmers CIO Peter Burggraaff sums up where their IT operations stood when he took on the challenge. “There was a basic misalignment between what we thought we were doing and what the business thought we were doing. We needed better planning and forecasting and more reliable and accurate information across the business. The way forward was through new technologies within a large scale SAP environment. We needed to cull the mainframe, reduce operating costs and make decisions that would support business interaction at all levels.”
“We are heading towards the most advanced retail POS environment in the country, and a key part of this strategy involves using Biztalk Server 2006 – the fact that we are first to go there is a trump card we were more than happy to play.”
A Word to the Wise
WISE or ‘Where is Stock Exactly’ is a fitting acronym for Farmers’ total business application. It could equally describe Peter Burggraaff’s very wise decision to work with the new Microsoft .NET server products to integrate SAP into the rest of Farmers’ application landscape.
Based on earlier contact with Intergen, Peter Burggraaff went talking to the team about integration challenges. “Intergen impressed with their really high level of competency and we said right, let’s form an early adoption team and really go for it. The opportunity to use Biztalk 2006 was hugely exciting, given that nobody else in New Zealand, or in fact the world, had got their hands on it. We were the first off the blocks to use Biztalk 2006 as such a business critical interface.”
“Intergen really took ownership and made the project their ‘problem’, – they went well beyond the task – so yes, they will continue to be a very strong part of the equation in the future.”
The Gain
At the end of the day the customer is the winner at Farmers – even if the processes that ensure the smooth purchase of a leather lounge suite or the purchase of Britney Spear’s new perfume are largely invisible. Biztalk 2006 means that all the supporting processes from the cash register at POS through to stock pricing, inventory and stock control are all seamlessly and accurately conveyed within the SAP structure. What does that mean at a store level? For example, sales transactions are processed hourly from the store controllers to SAP, right up to Christmas trading closing at 12.00pm. Or overnight, new catalogue lines and pricing information gets processed to each of the 63 stores ready for doors opening in the morning. Biztalk 2006 has been an important first step in making POS information the best it can be. Or to put it another way, Biztalk helps provide the eyes and ears that Farmers needs as a leading retailer.
With over 63 store frontages nationwide, Farmers was very happy to be first with this window of opportunity.
www.farmers.co.nz