Pleasance House Consulting - Projects -
Texstyle World
Introduction
This project was initiated by Texstyle World wishing to continue with the next phase of development that had been recommended in an IT strategy report prepared previously by Kurt Salmon Associates. Pleasance House Consulting was selected to lead the project because Allan Wilkie was known to Texstyle World and he knew of their current operations and aspirations.
Initial meetings were held with the Managing Director and IT Director to agree the terms of reference. These were:-
- To examine existing data and perform any "cleansing" required to allow Texstyle World to perform their merchandising operations more efficiently
- To confirm that the preferred planning package - Buyers Toolbox from ANT USA - would be a suitable merchandise planning tool
- To implement the planning system
- To confirm that the preferred business intelligence software would provide Texstyle World with a suitable platform for all their management reporting
- To build an integrated Merchandise Management Information System
Data Cleansing
Legacy systems contained two merchandise hierarchy structures. The first was built into product coding structures but had fallen into disrepair. The coding structures could not extend to cope with new categorisation requirements. Over time, products had been wrongly classified, tending to be grouped by buyer or supplier rather than by the true nature of the product. The second structure was only partially implemented and was not recognised throughout the business.
Working closely with the freshly-recruited merchandise controller, a new reporting structure was defined:-
Buying & Merchandising Team
|
Product Group
|
Product Category
|
Product Class
|
Design
|
Colour
|
Size (SKU)
Merchandisers were assisted in the classification process and the IT department given the necessary cross-references to implement the new structures automatically in the AS400 systems.
A new SQL Server merchandise database was designed and built. It was loaded automatically every night from the legacy systems. There were filters to block out old products for which there were no meaningful stock or sales transactions in the last three years; and to condense multiple definitions of the same colours and sizes into reduced sets.
Buyers Toolbox Verification
This process involved working with the main system user in Alphameric's
Buyers Toolbox Implementation
Extracts from the new SQL Server database were used to provide ANT
Live and Training databases were set up and administered. Connectivity was by ODBC from a variety of different client machine types on the Head Office network.
An automated weekly extract process was developed to produce the data required for the update of actual sales, stock and markdown, plus renewed forward commitment.
Staff training was organised and ongoing user support set up.
A bespoke utility was generated to automatically roll up sales, stock and markdown plans every night when "incomplete" bottom-up planning had been done.
Management Information System
The Cognos toolset was confirmed as being suitable for the development of
the new system. Data built into analysis cubes from the SQL Server database included
all sales and stock movement transactions going back three years. As Texstyle
World was trading in
Many standard reports were generated. Several were automatically sent to interested parties within the organisation, by e-mail, printing, publishing as html or spreadsheets etc. to suit the users' preferences.
The main Head Office users were fully trained in the use of the ad hoc reporting tools and the scope and design of the data within the system. This made them completely self-sufficient for reporting purposes, removing a sizeable workload from the IT department.
The final piece was to fully integrate the new systems by providing a routine to extract plans from Buyers Toolbox and load them into Cognos. This provided "Performance against Plan” reporting using all dimensions defined in the reporting system.
