Retail and Hospitality

Case Study:

Bestseller implements end-to-end solution

20 May 2008

With plans to open 1,000 new stores in the next two years, fashion retailer Bestseller wanted to implement a solution that would support continued expansion. The company chose to standardise on Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and found it could open new stores faster, and that employee productivity and business insight was increased.

Founded in 1972, Denmark-based Bestseller sells a wide range of clothing and accessories in more than 3,200 owned stores and through 12,000 independent retailers throughout the world.

By 2009 Bestseller plans to open 1,000 new retail outlets. The Bestseller IT team recognised that to support this level of expansion it would need a retail solution capable of expanding with the business.

IT manager Peter Ausum wanted to achieve this without building a complicated IT infrastructure made up of separate point-of-sale (POS), supply chain management, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

“We have a substantial number of stores to manage, and it’s a huge operation maintaining our POS and backoffice functionality,” says Ausum. “We needed to ensure that the new system was flexible and easy to work with.”

At the same time, the solution needed to meet a diverse set of requirements across the organisation. “On a strategic level, we wanted data to flow seamlessly between ERP systems, POS, and our data warehouse,” says Ausum. “This flow of data is crucial for us and it needs to support many different stores in many countries.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer visited Bestseller in April 2006, and by that August, IT professionals at Bestseller were working with the Microsoft EMEA retail team to configure a solution that the retailer’s employees could use for tasks such as order tracking, stock monitoring, and tracing transactions in real-time from the POS to the general ledger.

Two months later, Bestseller was presented with a solution that met its requirements. Bestseller maximised its IT investment through tight integration between its existing Microsoft technology and Microsoft Dynamics NAV. This was combined with a complete retail solution from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner LS Retail, called Retail NAV, which supports operations from the POS terminal to head office. Gold Certified Partner Munk IT also helped to customise the solution.

By implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4.0 and the LS Retail solution, Bestseller has business management software to control processes from store to head office level. The solution is easy to scale, simple to operate, and provides Bestseller with enhanced insight into its data and performance.

In addition, Bestseller now has the core functionality to support retail processes, which are then integrated into the supply chain to regulate stock management and ordering. Buyers can access store analytics through many different Microsoft technologies, providing them with the insight to make accurate purchasing decisions.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 edition of Retailspeak magazine.