Australia’s leading fabric, craft and home interior chain selects SAP for Retail
Sydney, Australia — Spotlight Pty Ltd, Australia’s leading fabric, craft and home interior chain of Superstores, has selected SAP for Retail in a revamp of its business information systems. The project is designed to provide Spotlight with access to detailed performance data to support its focus on customer relationships.
In an aim to improve visibility and management of stock and increase the effectiveness of pricing and promotion strategies, the company will deploy novaRetail, which is a fully integrated and pre-configured software packaged solution. The ERP Retail solution is based on the SAP for Retail industry solution from SAP retail partner, CIBER Novasoft.
“The business is experiencing strong growth,” said Anne McDiarmid, CIO, Spotlight. “We now have more than one hundred stores in Australia, Singapore and New Zealand and we are further expanding into Asia. There is now a substantial upside in putting the business onto a single information platform.”
The company will replace a number of existing systems including custom built applications and packaged solutions. Spotlight expects to complete the first phase of the SAP software implementation by October 2007.
A primary objective is to improve information flows between support group and the stores while retaining the cultural values of the organisation. Spotlight devolves a significant amount of decision making power to individual store managers, to meet the specific seasonal requirements and preferences of local customers.
The SAP system will support in-store promotions and will provide store managers and buyers with detailed analysis on promotions and special offers.
“The business has always had a strong focus on customer relationships and satisfaction through special offers and discounting strategies, many of which are geared towards our very loyal customer base. We selected SAP because it gives us an ability to retain and enhance this focus on customers through improved stock management and more efficient pricing, forecasting and planning.”
Spotlight is a privately owned family business, operating in Australia for the last 33 years. The company opened its first store in Melbourne and currently has 110 stores in Australia and New Zealand, one store in Singapore and one just opened in Hong Kong.
Spotlight’s rapidly expanding store network is enhanced by its Shop-At-Home Service. Customers are able to shop from home via telephone, fax or email, utilising Spotlight’s Customer Care Centre.
