Client Profile

Partnership Prerequisites and Key Business Challenges

Our client is a leading global home furnishing retailer selling Scandinavian-style home furnishings with fully integrated IT supply chains. They pioneered flat-pack, self-assemble furniture and accessories manufactured largely in developing countries to curtail cost. They have operations in 41 countries – 29 trading service offices in 25 countries and 27 DCs and 11 CDCs in 16 countries.

The company’s IT landscape comprises of four business processes and 16 application areas that manage IT operations spanning Supply Chain Planning and Execution, Supply Chain Integration, Retail Management and Store Operations, Merchandizing Solutions, POS Solutions, Infrastructure Support and B2B Integration.

Our client was looking for a partner who could help increase its IS capabilities by bringing in standardized yet flexible processes and enabling cost savings. This would allow the client to focus on its core business of home furnishing and design better. The expectations and key business challenges that needed to be addressed included:

?Reduce operational IT costs – Enable re-allocation of funds for new initiatives ?Flexibility - To scale up and down as required?Provide faster and more predictable IT solutions, matching business needs

Region : Sweden, EuropeIndustry/ Domain : Retail/ CPGFunctional Area : Supply Chain Planning, Integration and Execution, Retail

Management, Retail Web Management and InfrastructureArea of engagement : Managed Services

HCL Optimizes Operational IT Costs for a Leading Home Furnishing

Retailer through Managed Services

?Employ consultants in individual capacity to increase delivery capabilities straddled with poor product-quality, people dependency and lack of processes

?Hard to meet IT capability needs - Especially for niche skills like JDA Manugistics for supply chain planning

?Lack of domain understanding among independent consultants ?Poor SLAs and resource utilization across various service lines. Lacked capability to

effectively track health and quality of services and devise improvement plans?IT teams working in silos, lack of managed service delivery with SLA adherence and

KPI-based reporting model

HCL began this journey on 5th March 2007, by partnering with the global retailer to increase the delivery capacity. HCL was awarded service delivery assignments in the supply planning and supply execution areas in responsibility sharing model.

Service areas: Application Support & Maintenance, Application Development & Technology Migration, Support of Legacy Applications, Manugistics Implementation, Technical Documentation, Resource fulfillment and 24/7 Infrastructure Support services

Tools and technologies: JDA Manugistics, PL/SQL, Oracle 10g, 11i, Java/J2EE, WebSphere Application Server, RAC R2/9i/8, Cognos 8.3, Rational Rose, ClearCase, Clear Quest, Data Architect, Pro-Pascal and OpenVMS DCL Scripts, VB.NET, ASP.NET, IIS and Web Method 7.x. Remedy

Methodologies: ITIL V3-compliant processes for support, RUP, Agile and CMMi Compliant process for application development, HCL’s OMS and Practical Project Steering (PPS) methodology for project and portfolio management

?Achieved substantial cost-savings by moving from “staffing-only” to “managed-services” model and by leveraging offshore for IT service delivery

?Offered transparency in services through well-defined KPIs, SLA adherence and dashboards-based reporting

?Enabled “Business KPI” through close monitoring of ‘Critical Order Flow’ for customer’s supply chain and reduction of backorders

?Managed services model also brings benefits like improvement in quality of service and faster go-to-market for customer’s new initiatives

?HCL is managing support (L2 & L3), maintenance and enhancements (ASM/ADM) for 16 mission-critical ,12 critical and 22 other non-critical applications

?Supporting complex legacy applications, based on VAX/VMS platform used for merchandizing, store replenishment and inventory management, is tightly coupled with multiple systems

?Offered robust DR & BC plan with delivery enablement from two different cities – Noida and Chennai

?HCL contributed in a study to bring in application landscape simplification and technology platform standardization for various products

?To achieve next levels of productivity improvement, HCL implemented transformational solution in supplying process by consolidating service level fulfillment of applications in Supply Execution and Supply Planning.

?Over the years, successfully aligned HCL objectives with customer’s objectives – 4+ years of engagement has led to an excellent partnership through mutual trust, transparency, collaboration and common ways-of-working.

Enter HCL

HCL Services Snapshot

The HCL Difference

Our client was looking for a partner who could help it increase its IS capabilities by bringing in standardized yet flexible processes and enabling cost savings. This would allow them to focus on the core business of home-furnishing, and designing better and cheaper products for its customer base.

Hello, I’m from HCL! We work behind the scenes, helping our customers to shift paradigms and start revolutions. We use digital engineering to build superhuman capabilities. We make sure that the rate of progress far exceeds the price. And right now, 90,000 of us bright sparks are busy developing solutions for 500 customers in 31 countries across the world. How can I help you?

www.hcltech.com

Business Benefits

The Current Scenario

?Reduced inventory carrying cost: HCL managed application resulted in significant reduction in inventory carrying cost. HCL helped improve accuracy in the supply chain forecasting process from an average of 55% to 70% thereby preventing stores and DCs from being over or under-stocked.

?Less backorder, more savings: Close monitoring of ‘backorder creation’, business KPI and increase in forecast accuracy accredited to HCL maintained applications, preventing backorder creation worth €700,000 per day

?Improved service response time and SLAs: Improved service response time and increased SLA from 70% to 92% has led to satisfied business users. HCL has also helped deliver over 95% UPC adherence, consistently.

?Consolidating productivity: Consolidation of support for supply chain execution and planning application has resulted in productivity gains of 12%, with 8% reduction in cost of support achieved in the first year itself

?Provided much required retail domain knowledge coupled with skilled technical competence

?Close monitoring for improved service levels: Achieved service level improvements through closely monitored Problem Management, Cross skilling, Proactive Maintenance (Defect Prevention Analysis), Usage and Development of Self-Service tools and portals, Structured documentation and regular updation of Run-book

?Improved quality of service: Improved quality of service through proactive follow-up with stakeholders; Control ping-pong of tickets; Customer Satisfaction Survey; Structured Governance & Clear Escalation mechanism.

As the client decided to move from “develop and operate” to “manage and control”, HCL aligned itself to deliver through KPI-based managed services. Today for various project tracks, we deliver services around:

?Application support and maintenance ?Application development and technology migration ?Integration and B2B services?Test center and production support services

We operate largely in the supplying process with some presence in communication and selling and supporting processes.

Of the 50 applications that HCL supports, 28 are mission critical & critical applications of the retailer.

I am very proud of this delivery and I would like to thank all of you who were involved for your hard work, your focus and your togetherness in order to come to this result. - Service Manager, at customer’s IT organization