We develop a 3-5 year technology roadmap based on the business strategy, typically including recommendation of ERP* vs. Best of Breed** vs. development of existing systems.
An essential component of retail technology planning is a roadmap: a clear view of the retail applications needed to support the business over the following three years, of how they will fit together, and of the business benefits they will deliver. This is based on the business strategy, typically documented in a workshop with the executive team.
Over many years of successful retail technology planning we have developed a very effective approach to answering the following questions:
- Will our applications support the business in 3-5 years' time?
- Scale and growth
- New function and services needed
- Rapidly changing business needs
- What changes are needed, and by when?
- Should we enhance or replace?
- If replace, should it be with an ERP* or best of breed** packages?
- How should we integrate the solutions and should we follow a SOA*** approach?
- Which specific solutions should we select?
- What delivery roadmap? What costs/time frame?
- How will our applications map look in three years' time?
- How will we resource and manage the programme?
- What business value will this deliver?
We bring deep knowledge of best practices in retail enterprise architecture, process and organisation, as well as all the major retail/ecommerce applications and vendors.
The work is often followed by a detailed package selection which determines the best vendor to deliver the chosen application options. Examples include a Merchandise Management System (MMS), a merchandise planning solution, a Warehouse Management System (WMS), an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP)* and integration technologies.
* An ERP system is an end to end integrated system from a single supplier such as SAP.
** Best of breed is an approach using applications from specialist vendors, giving very good function but requiring integration of each separate application
*** SOA is Service Oriented Architecture, an approach which creates re-usable technology components that can be used by multiple applications
Please contact Will Treasure or call +44 (0)20 7961 3200 to discuss your requirements.