TRENT - Powered by SAP NetWeaver, mySAP ERP A Case study.

Headquartered at Mumbai, Trent Ltd. was already a successful department store enterprise when it decided on a bold move – to branch out into hypermarket retailing.

Based on the new model, the hypermarket retailing would require the support of a new kind of IT infrastructure. For this they searched and evaluated several players in the market and finally Trent tapped SAP solutions.

“We evaluated several vendors, and only SAP met all our criteria.” Said Mr. K.V.S. Seshasai, Head of IT and Corporate Quality, Trent Ltd.

Trent is the part of the Tata Group, one of India's largest and most respected business conglomerates. Trent already had 12 Westside department stores focused on fashion retailing that were operating across India. However, in October 2004, the company launched its first hypermarket discount format store, Star India Bazaar.

Star India bazaar, being a Greenfield project, Trent had the enviable advantage of starting from scratch, with no outdated legacy systems or applications that had to be upgraded or integrated into the new infrastructure. They envisioned creating a state-of-the-art, integrated IT infrastructure that incorporated the latest in best practices.

Why SAP Solutions:

• The flexible state-of-the-art solution incorporates retail best practices.
• SAP's partner relationship with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) guaranteed high levels of support.
• The SAP solutions could be localized to meet special country requirements.

Trent finally decided to go ahead with a host solutions from SAP including, mySAP ERP; SAP for Retail solution portfolio; SAP NetWeaver platform, including the SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence and SAP NetWeaver Application Server components and the SAP NetWeaver Portal component with knowledge management functionalities. A small, separate, point-of-sale (POS) system between the store and Trent's headquarters office was also to be implemented.

Key Challenges

• Provide a flexible, scalable IT infrastructureto support the initial hypermarket launch and sunsequent hypermarket stores.
• Attain the ability to handle a large volume of transactions
• Have a localized solution to deal with complex Indian market requirements and government regulations

A 10 to 15 member dedicated team from TCS, core team of 8 senior members from Trent, familiar with every aspect of retail business, along with SAP, worked closely on the implementation of the project. The focused and joint efforts of the above team completed the implementation of the project in targeted six months. There were no major problem at go-live except for a few issues around integrating the POS system with SAP software – which were resolved on the first day of operation.

Key Business Process:

Trent is already realizing benefits from the infrastructure. “There are some specific advantages that we are already enjoying. For example, we are making good use of SAP NetWeaver BI analytic and data warehouse functionalities, which provide an invaluable window into the business,” said Mr. Seshasai

Key Benefits:

End-to-end process integration

• Flexibility to accommodate evolving business processes and executive reporting
• Comprehensive business requirements coverage.
• Established a robust platform for building enterprise –wide solution components
• Established and IT infrastructure that will support Trent's hypermarket growth now and in the future.
• Cost optimization
• Increased efficiency in integration of operations with finance.

The implemented solution also made pricing much easier for the hypermarket. The infrastructure has given Trent a complete end-to-end process integration with minimum user intervention. It flexibly accommodates evolving business process and executive reporting requirements.

Source SAP