Retail Special Report
<< He and his team did an incredible job a customised version of Calidus by
in a very short space of time, resulting in Open Business Solutions (OBS), which is
the whole team being able to relocate by updated in real time. The company uses
the 17 January 2008, while much of the SAP for stock control and managing
computer integration work continued for
a few weeks thereafter.”
Computer technology
“
New target areas are a bit like
gardening; you plant a seed and
then maybe a year down the line the
In terms of IT hardware, Carpetright runs
green shoots start to appear.”
its own data centres in Purfleet. These
largely comprise a series of HP servers.
– Martin Harris
Ian Woosey takes up the story: “We
use virtualisation so we need far fewer customer accounts, and so enjoys full
servers, which saves a lot on energy visibility of this information in real-time.
Martin Harris: “I would say we’re
and cooling costs. We have a team of In terms of inventory levels, these can be
fortunate because although we
operators that works 24/7, 364.5 days a split into individual SKUs, so staff know
always go into any market downturn
year to manage the data centres. There is exactly how many physical roles of carpet
early we tend to come out of it early
also a small in-house team of developers are stored on the shelves at any one too. Two years ago we witnessed
and a team of project managers and time; they even know the size of each consumer demand slowly coming
business analysts, plus some additional role. “As a customer places an order
off the pace; it was very gradual
technical personnel.” On the computer at one of our stores, we feed this data
and I think the market will improve
software side, the warehouse management into the WMS,” explained Woosey. “The
in the same way.”
system (WMS) used by Carpetright is system will then tell us, for example, we
have 20 different of the software that its courier of choice,
orders for the same DHL, relies on, such as Paragon Route
carpet, so we know we Planner. “In this way, we can automatically
can cut those roles to provide DHL with the appropriate route
size for each of these information on a daily basis,” Harris
customers in the most pointed out. Carpetright also has wireless
efficient time- and installed throughout its building and
cost-saving manner.” warehouse in Purfleet. All vehicles in the
warehouse are fitted with Psion Teklogix
The data provided by truck-mounted wireless terminals that tell
Carpetright’s WMS the driver which carpet to select and
and SAP systems is where to collect it from. These terminals
also used by Martin also allow the drivers to scan rolls of
Harris’s team to carpet before storing them in the right
determine required bay and on the correct shelf.
stock levels and to
help forecast demand. In its retail stores, Carpetright runs a
All software is fully customised version of Microsoft Dynamics’
integrated, including Navision point-of-sale (POS) software.
cutting machine Woosey outlines the operational procedure:
software supplied by “Customers come into our stores and
ETF. This software place an order for a room or several
informs the cutter in rooms. They may also place an order for
the warehouse of the underlay and gripper bars, and they may
type and size of at a later stage decide to change this
carpet required by order to some extent. All this data is
each customer. The captured on Navision, which then relays
company’s software the information to our SAP software for
systems are also stock control purposes. We replaced
integrated with some about 15 different applications of >>
A carpet’s barcode label is scanned once the order has been
verified for accuracy against the data held on the operative’s
computer monitor.
8 IT RESELLER – SEPTEMBER 2009
www.itrportal.com
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