BACK OFFICE 21
FOSSIL AUTOMATES OPERATIONAL IT PROCESSES
offi ce systems. Having implemented the SAP Apparel &
F
Footwear (AFS) industry solution running on an IBM AIX platform to provide fi nance and accounting, sales analysis and customer service management, the watch and accessory brand decided to continue to use AS/400-based warehouse management system PkMS, from Manhattan Associates, to manage order processing, packaging, and product distribution at its US distribution centre.
“Running a single SAP instance to support a 24-hour global business operation put great pressures on how we managed our processing,” explained Andy Hess, vice president of wholesale applications at Fossil Inc. “Add to this the fact that as an organisation Fossil has been growing rapidly year-on-year, it was plain that we couldn’t afford to continue running systems that had in-built slack times if we were going to support our business operations.” The UC4 platform has been implemented
by Fossil to automate processing across its worldwide wholesale retail operations. Orders received are booked into SAP AFS and allocated to PkMS for fulfi lment and
ossil Inc. has automated its wholesale order processing and increased the speed of response of essential back-
distribution. UC4 manages the dependencies between these applications, ensuring orders get picked up for processing by PkMS and tracking numbers for order shipments get passed back to SAP. UC4 also automates many of the internal background processing within SAP and PkMS applications. Hess said. “UC4 gives us end-to-end process visibility. Flowcharts, boxes and colour coding make it easy for us to drill down and see what is going on. This is especially useful when we need to get into the system and make sure that critical jobs run through to meet business deadlines.” As well as automating order processing, the UC4 platform is used to schedule over 2,000 jobs a day at Fossil, in areas including order management, fi nance and accounting, procurement, warehouse functions (in Germany), production allocation and demand forecasting. It is also being used to perform maintenance tasks, such as health checking AS/400 systems and the nightly transfer of orders to Fossil’s Hong Kong facility. Future applications of UC4 at Fossil will include
managing intermediate document or ‘iDOC’ transfers between Fossil’s non-SAP systems and SAP, as well as master data interfacing. Fossil also uses UC4 to run jobs on
separate SAP retail and human resource (HR) systems, while the automation of demand planning workload generated by SAP advanced planner and optimiser (APO) and SAP business intelligence (BI) enterprise reporting is also managed by the platform. “The biggest hurdle we face is time. We
don’t have time to wait. Those three months leading up to year-end are critical to our business. UC4 gives us single visibility into what is happening in our world. Being able to claim back the slack times, compress run times and experience many fewer job failures with UC4 has given us the scalability and fl exibility to support our business growth,” concluded Hess.
HMV COLLABORATION MAXIMISES PROMOTIONS Steve Consalvi, project manager at
The product buyers of entertainment retailer HMV work closely with its suppliers to create thematic, topical or new release competitive promotional campaigns. In order to simplify processes for
planning, tracking and managing the lifecycle of each product and deals negotiated daily with suppliers across thousands of stock- keeping units (SKUs), the company is using Trace One’s Deals and Terms Management web-based software.
HMV, explained: “Trace One provides us with a ‘single version of the truth’ when it comes to all the deals that are made with suppliers, as a clear audit trail is kept. All details are stored on one system, which can be accessed by all parties involved, creating a streamlined process, while enhancing our relationships with suppliers. It has also standardised the process internally at HMV, which means
there is a single format for all deals that are made.”
Consalvi added: “Trace One’s unique system has undeniably helped HMV save time, money and resource by streamlining the deals and terms process with our suppliers. It has helped fulfi l key business objectives by continuing to ensure that our buyers are getting the very best commercial deals for HMV and giving fantastic offers to our customers.”
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
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