ASICS to implement SAP BI 7.0 for reporting and market analysis, to support the company’s continued growth
Sydney, Australia — SAP Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) today announced that sporting footwear and apparel manufacturer, ASICS Oceania Pty Ltd., is investing in new Business Intelligence software as part of a program to increase business efficiency and support decision making within the company’s business user environment. SAP channel and services partner, Supply Chain Consulting, a Fujitsu Company will work with ASICS to implement Business Intelligence (SAP BI 7.0), Xcelsius Enterprise, Crystal Reports 2008 and BusinessObjects Edge software.
ASICS has also recently implemented SAP Solution Manager with Supply Chain Consulting. With 50 users currently in Australia and 1,500 worldwide, ASICS required a solution that would help it manage its expanding SAP systems environment. The company reviewed a number of solutions, including Lotus Notes, before selecting SAP Solution Manager.
“The Australian arm of the ASICS business has demonstrated exemplary performance over the last five years. We have achieved 15 per cent year on year compound growth here and our market share in Australia currently sits at 25.5 per cent,” said Arata Ikeda, Managing Director, ASICS. “The growth of ASICS has made information management and presentation more important. We have realised that we need to become more analytical as a business. We recognised the need to invest and strengthen our internal systems, to enable us to explore and analyse new markets effectively.
“We want to establish a business platform that will not only keep pace with our organisational growth but also provide access to information and insights that will enable us to executive effectively against an aggressive five year business plan.”
The new SAP BusinessObjects software will engage the business users at ASICS, initially to be used by the senior management team and sales managers and then to be rolled out to all other departments in the organisation, including finance and operations. The organisation aims to create a system that is more user-friendly and allows automated data collection.
“The implementation of SAP BusinessObjects software will mean that those staff that currently don’t use our back-end IT systems in their everyday work, will be able to use the new Xcelsius Enterprise dashboards and access reports easily without having to wait for IT staff to access reports for them.”
Previously, staff spent hours taking data from multiple reports and combining data into a presentation format. Sales managers needed to engage the IT department when they required data for forecasting, conference presentations and ad-hoc customer requests. The new reporting system will allow managers to have visibility of their key performance indicators in a dashboard format, with the ability to drill down on sales by state, category or size. Managers will also now be able to create ad-hoc queries for client meetings on short notice.
Japanese headquartered ASICS is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which required its systems and processes to be J-SOX compliant. J-SOX is a recently introduced requirement in Japan, similar to Sarbanes Oxley, which calls for internal controls over financial reporting for public companies.
“We chose to work with SAP initially because the SAP Apparel and Footwear Solution (AFS) is highly regarded in the industry and we wanted to take advantage of this software. From there, we chose to work with Supply Chain Consulting as they are an accredited SAP AFS partner,” said Ikeda. “They have been a valuable partner to us over the last three years. Supply Chain Consulting really understands the ASICS business in Australia and has extensive experience working with businesses of our size.”
Prior to the recent SAP Solution Manager implementation, ASICS was running SAP Business All-in-One, which included AFS Industry Solution, SAP SD (Sales and Distribution) benchmark, SAP MM (Materials Management), SAP FICO (Finance and Control) and SAP XI (Exchange Infrastructure). ASICS is looking at further utilising SAP BusinessObjects Edge and looking at replacing its legacy warehouse management and CRM solutions with SAP.
ASICS Oceania Pty Ltd is a sportswear company supplying sporting apparel and footwear to Athlete’s Foot, Rebel Sport and Footlocker, among other retailers in Australia. The Oceania arm of ASICS has been operating since 1986 and it is headquartered in Sydney, Australia with operations in New Zealand and the South Pacific. ASICS employs 70 staff in the Oceania region and is the largest sporting footwear company in Australia. Globally, ASICS is headquartered in Kobe, Japan. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with global revenues of over US$2 billion. It is the fifth largest sportswear company in the world, employing more than 4,000 staff.
