Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
B&Q is the
largest DIY retailer in the UK by quite a long shot. Its also the
largest international DIY retailer with businesses in China,
Taiwan, Poland and Turkey.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
Around about 300 stores and about 30,000 employees in
the UK, weve been working with SAP for round about five years.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
From SAP Finance,
through SAP HR and were now getting into Retail.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
We had a lot of confidence in SAPs ability to really
deliver what they said they were going to do.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
We have established
our policy as being building as much of our environment around
SAP. Therefore, the logical conclusion was to use it for most of
our core operational systems. The replenishment project covers
all major replenishment for all our stores, moving away from,
from, a semi automated replenishment system.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
Theres huge benefits to that in terms of managing
inventory and reducing the work load for the store staff.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
Historically weve
had a degree of customer ordering in store, we felt we needed a
more sophisticated tool.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
We have browser-based screens throughout the store
for the store staff to use.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
And its a very
successful tool set in store, its an improvement in customer
service.
Supplier relationship management is obviously critical to a
retail business. We are looking at how we deploy technology to
support that and clearly SAP as a key part of our infrastructure
will be essential in that process.
We are treating our distribution replenishment as a separate
project, and its about replenishment of our central distribution
network.
Of the projects weve implemented were happy that we have, and
are delivering the benefits we need to deliver. Indeed in some
cases I expect to be able to demonstrate better delivery of
benefits than anticipated.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
Our finance systems are in place running smoothly,
everyone gets paid every month through the HR system, the
customer ordering system in particular weve seen a huge increase
in the volume of customer orders going through since the systems
been implemented. So thats been a huge success from that point of
view.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
We have implemented SAP on an international basis. It
is part of our international deployment strategy to try and
ensure that as we start new businesses and create new businesses
and grow new businesses they work to a consistent operating model
allowing for local variations.
Steve Gilman, Director, B&Q International
Weve got
SAP into Turkey, 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, 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
(INT) suite.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
China is growing
fast, and SAP is very successfully supporting that.
Steve Gilman, Director, B&Q International
Any way you
look at business, its improved our business, if you look
forwards, weve now got the functionality set up to run a big
business, we can open our 58 stores by 2005 if thats what we wish
we to do, weve got the functionality there to do it.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
Alongside the major R/3 implementation weve been
trialing the portal in a couple of areas - in employee self
service, also in goods not for resale. Our strategy is that we
will have a portal technology so that people can access any of
our systems from anywhere.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
Given our
commitment to the SAP infrastructure and architecture, clearly
our way forward is BW. So yes, were planning to implement, SAP
BW, over the next year or so
If I talk about the relationship between B&Q and SAP,
thats a very strong relationship. SAP plays a key role in making
sure that our implementations are successful.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
Weve worked very closely with SAP throughout the
projects, particularly on the retail side where weve got very
closely involved in discussing future requirements.
As regards to the SAP user group its good to network with
other people who are involved, and that gives us the opportunity
to feed back to SAP.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
It was key to us,
and to SAP I think, that we worked together with them to help
them understand the best way of creating a software suite to
support a large scale volume retailer like ours.
NovaSoft frequently operate as our partner in implementing SAP
solutions. They were absolutely key in the international
deployment and did a very good job for us.
IBM is a key partner to B&Q and have been involved in the
projects, in particular on the deployment of the technology to
support the project
SAPs best of breed credentials is the most integrated ...
probably the best in terms of integration, available today.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
Weve taken a phased approach to rolling out in the
UK, weve got ambitious growth plans for the business and without
that solid foundation we would not be able to support the
business growth that we are predicting.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
Its delivering
substantial benefits to the business as a whole in terms of
flexibility of product delivery, in terms of quality of stock
information and in terms of replenishment and stock availability.
Ian Anthony, Technical Infrastructure Programme Manager,
B&Q
When you do go live with a system, its a marvellous
feeling, you start to see it being used and you see the users
getting benefit from it, supporting the business.
Roderick Angwin, IT Director, B&Q
SAP Retail is
growing into being a very sophisticated product to support retail
and therefore I would have no hesitance in recommending people
look at it and use it.
Interview conducted by Sarah Turner, Customer
Marketing Manager, SAP UK on 15th May 2003.
Click here to watch the video.