With over 25 years of experience in the footwear and clothing industry, Marketing Investment Group (MIG) now runs the largest retail platform for sports and lifestyle brand products in Poland. MIG resells well-known international brands such as Timberland, O’Neill, adidas, Nike and Umbro across over 400 stores, both in its own retail chains and through an extensive network of wholesale distribution. In addition, the company also runs a dozen e-commerce stores that specialize in selling some of the different footwear and fashion brands which are part of MIG’s portfolio. As the company went through an expansion phase, and their number of items and transactions increased, they realized their legacy standalone systems had become too outdated to meet performance requirements. Not only: at the time, the company used a manual database application, which couldn’t maintain information from multiple stores. Their technical setup was hindering expansion, and gave MIG a limited overview over their enterprise. To support and accelerate the growth of their organization and retail chain, MIG required new technology. The company started looking for a standardized, latest technology software solution that could support the whole range of the Group’s operations.
Searching for the right software solution
The company decided they would substitute their home-grown set of disparate solutions with a single, unified system. Some of the requirements included:
- minimal financial investment needed for implementation and maintenance
- ability to support MIG’s modular approach to business
- automations for repetitive and recurring processes
- deep data analytics and reporting tools
- scalability
- reliability
- easy integration to the Group’s and their external partners’ system applications.
The search ended successfully when the company was presented with all the capabilities of the LS Retail software solution, built on Microsoft Dynamics.
A reliable system, designed for growth
MIG was especially impressed by LS Retail software’s proven track record, its ability to scale, the breadth of support and resources available (for example, in the form of multiple LS Retail and Microsoft Dynamics partner companies) and the reasonable maintenance service fees. The standard version of the LS Retail software solution already covered 80 percent of MIG’s functional requirements, which meant little integration and customization would be needed – a great plus, which proved crucial in the final decision. The system was implemented by IT.Integro, a local LS Retail implementation partner.
Efficiently running 300 stores, and counting
Today, Marketing Investment Group uses the LS Retail software solution to run its over 300 stores. The new system has enabled MIG to successfully meet the challenges of the competitive retail market, and grow from a 100-store company to a 300-store enterprise which is still expanding.
Automating stock management
Inventory management can now be handled simply and effectively. Based on current store inventory levels and sales history, LS Retail software automatically calculates the quantity of items that need to be replenished from central warehouses, and then generates the documents required for item transfer orders. These automated processes have streamlined operations, and reduced the workload at the MIG headquarters. As a result, the system is effectively supporting business growth, as the opening of new stores does not require increased administration resources.
Central control
The system has enabled MIG to centralize management of items, promotions, users and POS terminals. By using a single system across the business, for all its brands and member companies, MIG can now easily trace and analyze critical business information. As LS Retail software provides management at MIG with up-to-date sales performance data from any store in its chain, the company now has the tools to take effective business decisions that are based on data.
All the channels together
The LS Retail software solution is designed for unified commerce. This means that data flows in real time from the ERP to the different channels and back, ensuring that all prices, items, offers, and orders are always consistent across the physical stores and the e-commerce stores the company runs. As a result, there are no errors across the channels, ensuring happy customers across the spectrum.
