Sprider Stores - Greece
Fashion retailer unifies reporting and business processes with Microsoft Dynamics and LS Retail
Sprider Stores is the leading fashion chain in Greece, providing an unlimited variety of clothes, accessories and shoes for men, women and children. The company registers smooth sales volumes throughout the whole year. The huge variety of products in combination with low prices and a philosophy focused on the customer, differentiates Sprider Stores from others fashion retailers in the market. The company was established in 1971. Today it operates over 107 stores, 23 of which are located outside of Greece. At the beginning of 2000, the company entered the Bulgarian market, starting only wholesale operations. The regional expansion of Sprider Stores began with the opening of the first store in Bulgaria in 2006. In the same year, a Sprider store was also opened in Skopje, FYROM. Consecutively, the company started offering its fashion lines in Romania, Poland and Cyprus as well. Currently it has 4 stores in Bulgaria, and is planning to further strengthen its presence on the local market.
Business Challenges
Fashion retail highly depends on the seasonal shifts of fashion trends. Being a company that respects the quality of its products and services, Sprider Stores accepted the challenges to deal in a changing market environment where swift adaptation to new demands is essential for business survival. Consistency and timeliness of reporting are major issues when a company outgrows its local focus area and starts expanding into new markets. The Sprider Stores’ HQ in Greece requests all retail sites to send daily reports in a unified format with details about the registered turnover by article type, line, size and color. Based on these reports, detailed production orders are generated regularly. On behalf of every Sprider store, inventories are monitored centrally and delivery orders are generated to immediately correspond to the market demands. The increase in the number of retail sites inevitably creates the need for automation of administrative processes and a stable structure of POS terminals at hand to provide reliable and timely information for the effective management of the entire chain of stores.
Solution
When the expansion of the business to Bulgaria and FYROM started in 2006, the retailer had to quickly choose an appropriate IT solution and an implementation partner. The project had to be executed within a very tight deadline before the start of operations of the new stores. The major requirement to the implementation partner was that he had a sound knowledge and expertise in the integrated business solution selected by Sprider’s HQ, as well as trained staff to quickly execute the implementation and to provide post implementation support to the stores in Bulgaria and FYROM. Sprider Stores decided to select the LS Retail software add-on for Microsoft Dynamics ERP. The solution facilitates swift data transfer from POS terminals and back office to the head office. The major advantage of LS Retail is that it provides a variety of options for the review and analysis of sales data, so that the management can easily assess the performance of each store over a specific period and at a given moment. Reporting functionalities allow the management to review sales data by period, total revenues, sales per POS, and/or per store, fashion line, number of customers and number of items sold, thus providing a rational background for ensuring increased efficiency and optimization of costs. All POS terminals exchange data with the centrally located back office server in real time, which makes possible the centralized management of product lines, prices, as well as the planning, execution and measurement of the immediate impact of different promotions. Thus time is saved and business processes are optimized. As a result, a higher business performance and timely response to the changes on the competitive market are consistently achieved.
Results and Benefits
Sprider Stores selected an LS Retail implementation partner and they managed to complete the implementation in both Sofia and Skopje within 30 days thanks to their experience in projects in the retail industry and in-depth knowledge of the LS Retail solution. Sprider was able to officially open its stores with a ready-to-use POS integrated system so that the management was able to monitor the profitability of their investment from the very beginning.
Quality and speed of service
The easily customizable LS Retail software add-on for Microsoft Dynamics ERP significantly reduces the time needed for registering sales transactions, while errors can easily be avoided at the same time and the activities of the staff at the POS is effectively organized.
Optimized processes and centralized control
Since the system is centralized and uses a single database, and transactions are recorded in real time, the document turnover is reduced and consequently the work in the accounting and back office departments is optimized. Promotions are being planned and executed more effectively. The direct access to real time data eliminates all previous issues with planning and monitoring of warehouse and in-store inventories. Immediate and reliable information for timely decision-making and planning, the access to timely and reliable information makes it possible for the management to control the performance of all stores from the head office. From the managerial perspective, the most essential features of the solution are its rich reporting tools and the options to analyze sales by price, quantity, promotion activity and revenue. The ability to quickly perform detailed analysis applying different criteria and for different periods, facilitates the Sprider Stores’ management to increase efficiency and minimize costs.
Proven model for replication
The successful implementation in the first locations abroad and within the tough deadlines set by Sprider Stores translated into a clearly defined methodology that secures the rapid and reliable replication of the model in future implementations of Microsoft Dynamics ERP and LS Retail at other sites in the continuously expanding Sprider Stores network.