This large Australian-based, multi-national retailer (retail group) of homewares and consumer electrical products operates both company-owned and operated stores and franchises. With stores located in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Southeast Asia, the company achieves broad market appeal operating under several different brands.
In support of the retail group’s digital transformation strategy, two subsidiary brands, which are independently operated, have successfully modernised their operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The first business (retailer) is a high-end luxury retailer offering an extensive range of contemporary designer furniture from the world’s finest luxury brands. The second (distributor) exclusively imports and distributes a range of white goods and appliances from around the world.
Business challenge
With various diverse and independent businesses operating on disparate, heavily customised, and legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, the retail group sought to improve transparency and process consistency via a standardised ERP cloud solution roll-out. Furthermore, the significant manual intervention required by the different legacy systems used across the business led to time pressures and human errors.
With multiple disparate systems, the in-store customer engagement was cumbersome and inconsistent. Staff were often unable to generate quotes for unique and one-off luxury furniture items when customers visited the showroom, ultimately losing revenue due to the inability to engage buyers promptly.
“Having the skills, experience and knowledge to analyse those business processes and conceive viable alternatives is the added value DXC provides.”
Carsten Pedersen Senior Executive in the Microsoft Dynamics Practice at DXC
Too many cumbersome, siloed systems resulted in a disjointed and slow sales process. Quotes and order processing lived in two separate systems making sales cycles long and cumbersome because many one-off and unique pieces are purchased from global suppliers, when goods arrived from overseas, limited control and visibility on the shipping status of containers meant delivery was also complex and hard to manage. The retailer needed an end-toend solution for seamless management of quoting, item creation, ordering and supply tracking to ensure a premium customer experience that matched its high-end products.
Faced with similar technological issues, the distributor wanted to eliminate siloed solutions and introduce best practice across several business areas, including inventory, warehouse management and electronic data interchange (EDI) with their major retail customers. Its challenges also focused on the manual intervention required by legacy systems, with the goal to streamline processes, increase automation, improve productivity, and eliminate unnecessary human involvement.
Time for change
As part of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy, the retail group selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the preferred application across the group. Dynamics 365 met the unique business requirements across its diversified business, and offered the functionality and capability required within the retail and distribution space, while fulfilling the retail group’s overarching reporting and consolidation needs. With the solution selected for implementation, the retail group worked with the individual subsidiaries to select their preferred implementation partner based on their unique requirements.
Solution
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a comprehensive business management/ERP solution providing financials, purchasing, inventory and warehouse management, as well as CRM, including the unique sales processes (opportunity and pipeline management, proposal/sales quotation generation, sales order, delivery, and invoicing).
Even though two previous Microsoft partners were unsuccessful at making progress on these projects, Microsoft was confident that the selected solution was appropriate for the customers’ needs. Recognising the customers needed a strong implementation in order to deliver a successful project, Microsoft recommended DXC Technology take over these two projects.
DXC Practice for Microsoft was selected as implementation partner based on reputation and experience in delivering complex solutions, as well as its deep understanding of the nuances of businesses in both the retail and distribution sectors.
DXC assigned both projects the same project manager and solution delivery manager to ensure consistency with requirements and to guarantee the retail group’s overall digital strategy was met. Accurate project scoping was essential, with DXC visiting both sites to conduct comprehensive initial assessments. After spending time working with key individuals, the desired vision was defined. Proposals were developed with the foundation for engagement based on DXC’s expert understanding of retail and distribution market needs.
Results and business benefits
The retail group is incredibly happy with the two projects, which are already demonstrating improved productivity and visibility across the different businesses, as well as robust reporting functionality set to support significantly improved decision making. Both the retailer and distributor now have an integrated Microsoft cloud solution that has eliminated siloed processes, improved financial management, automated the supply chain, and significantly improved customer experience and satisfaction levels. Dynamics 365 Business Central has helped both organisations to reduce duplication of work and eliminated many manual and error-prone processes.
Carsten Pedersen, senior executive in the Microsoft Dynamics Practice at DXC said, “DXC has a depth of skills amongst our team that’s hard to match. We understand what customers need for their business and take the time to get our scope right up front. We listen to what the business needs, but we’re not afraid to push back and suggest a different approach. Sometimes, customer decisions are based on years of entrenched behaviour. Having the skills, experience and knowledge to analyse those business processes and conceive viable alternatives is the added value DXC provides.”
Better in-store operations and smarter selling for improved customer experience
As a high-end retailer, customers expect a personalised and professional experience. Customer quotes with unique items are now produced instantly with photos and other information required to make a purchase decision. With easy access to the necessary tools and information on a single platform, sales staff are happier, more engaged, and able to provide better customer service as they can now efficiently and effectively finalise a sale on the spot, providing customers with everything they need in real-time to make important (and high value) sales decisions.
The ordering process is automated at the back end, with invoices matched and payments processed quickly and efficiently across the supply chain. By building a single, centralised retail operations platform, the endto- end process is optimised, driving meaningful and lasting customer relationships. In addition, DXC’s Container Management add-on hasimproved the tracking of goods being shipped from overseas suppliers — understanding what’s in each container, where in the world the container is, and predicted arrival dates — so they can provide this information to the customer, and ensure timely dispatch or buyer collection when goods arrive.
Improved processing and supply chain automation for the distributor
The additional benefits gained through automation of the ordering process using EDI cannot be underestimated for the distributor. DXC’s EDI add-on allows customers to place orders, with complex automated algorithms reviewing, adjusting, accepting, and confirming these orders, and automatically releasing them for picking, packing and dispatching — without any manual intervention.
This has eliminated all unnecessary human interaction and improved accuracy and response times, resulting in significant improvements to the logistic functions, reduced complexity across the entire process, time savings, and elimination of errors.
The future
With a strong foundation now laid, opportunities to expand upon these solutions to enable further functionality will be pursued by both businesses. In addition, following the success of these projects, DXC may be engaged to rollout the standardised ERP cloud strategy for other businesses in the group.
DXC continues to work closely with Microsoft as a trusted partner, positioned as their ‘go to’ partner for challenging projects.