B&Q International is part obviously of the B&Q Group, part of Kingfisher. In terms of the way we run, I'm a member of the main board of B&Q UK, but I have responsibility for anything that B&Q does outside the United Kingdom.

B&Q International stores are in mainland China, Taiwan and Turkey, but we also have responsibility for Kingfisher's home improvement business, Nomi, in Poland. In Poland we currently have 34 - I think it's 35 this week, actually, in Turkey we have 5 stores, in Taiwan 14, and in Mainland China 7 now, we've just opened our 7th, a few weeks ago.

Home improvement as we probably all know from the UK, there are many home improvement stores here, it's getting tougher to grow your market. It's still possible, but it is getting tougher, so B&Q International's role is to expand B&Qs reach around the world.

We always talk about Pan-Asian vision, so Taiwan was an initial bridgehead, and then obviously, going into Mainland China, 1.3 billion people, the fastest growing economy in the world, and you know, that's the place where we believe we can be particularly successful.

Our first system was one called High Links. It was formed by a group of young, Chinese, systems producers, who were employed by the Chinese Missile Programme and did this as sideline. It was never going to be the answer though, once we made the decision that we really wanted to progress in China, then obviously we then start to say that we want a system that brings added-value to the marketplace, a quick look around and SAP obviously seemed to be the solution.

The dual-bite language was actually very attractive to us, my colleague in China can see it in Chinese and I can see it in English, the same screen, or Turkish or Polish or any of the other languages.

We put SAP into our Turkish business first. We formed a template, which we were then able to implement very easily. At the same time, we started the Chinese solution, it was like a relay race - the baton went from Turkey on to China. The result was that we got a staggering result, a great systems base at very, very low-cost. We put a project team together, and then they were able to deliver in a much shortened period of time, 7 months, a full SAP suite.

It still quite amazes me when you see the detail of it, so basically in China, we replaced everything, the way we buy the products, the way we merchandise the products, the way we sell it, the way we count our cash, so if you talk about SAP system functionality, it's an enormous list.

I can give you the list if you like.
Finance, General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Asset Accounting, Control and Cost Centre Accounting, Profit Centre, Sales, Sales Order Processing, Shipping, Billing, Returns Processing, Pricing Procedures, Customer Master, Retail Article Master, Vendor Master, Site Master, Merchandising, Listing, Ranging, Retail Pricing, Purchasing, External Purchasing, Internal, Replenishment Processes, Integration of Replenishment Processes and all the Processes, Store index Management, Inventory Management, Stock Valuation, Distribution Centre Processes, Stock Management Warehouse Processes, Stock Valuation, and PIs inbound and outbound.

On top of that, they managed to save a bit of money, and I put a little bit more money to it and then installed the Data Warehouse as well.

By having the system, we've actually had to drive the business processes and the way we do business and then give us a discipline, and that's now formed the core functionality of B&Q International's processes.

We actually record margin accurately and sales accurately, which certainly we didn't do that before. Certainly in terms of the suite of information that we now get in terms of our buyers, that's improved our margin, I mean basically, anywhere you look at business, it's improved our business.

If you look forwards, we've now got the functionality set up to run a big business. We can open our 58 stores we've talked about by the end of 2005 if that's what we wish to do, and we've got the functionality there to do it. And it also gives us a lead against all our competitors.

It's the first SAP retail installation in China, so there's no SAP retail experience in the marketplace, so we called on the SAP experience from Singapore, we've had a great relationship from day one.

You then look at NovaSoft. NovaSoft have been excellent, they've enabled us to do an implementation much quicker at much lower cost by just taking that learning on board, so it's a partnership. Everybody wins.

We have the ability of actually, you know, driving costs down and driving benefits up, which is what I think systems is all about.

Our prime focus is to build this Pan-Asian business, that's what we always talk about. China I think will be the star longer term, big profitable business.

When you think that Shanghai has somewhere between 18 and 20 million people, so it's something like, you know, 40% of the UK population.

I would like to see a really strong business in Asia. Who knows, 10 or 15, 20 years time, it might be bigger than the home business here in the UK and Europe - that's what I want.

B&Q International (5mins 49secs) ( Click here to view the text version)