ICT and e-Business Impact in the Retail Industry - empirica

e-Business in the Retail Sectoreventually goods forwarding when passing through multiple warehouses. Dirk van denBroek's store selling space is limited to an average of 1,000 square meters, thus in orderto maximise selling space allocation, all stores keep their stock on the shelves. Brooklandmanages approximately 12,000 individual articles, and suppliers can perform direct storedeliveries for perishable goods like meat, vegetables, bread, milk and magazines alike.Brookland operates with high inventory turnover rates and frequent store replenishments,e.g. between 2 to 4 times per day (from each warehouse, along with direct deliveries thisresults in an average of 14 trucks per store per day). This represents a big challenge forthe company in finding the right balance between shelf-availability and replenishmentprocess efficiency, both at store and warehouse levels. An additional challenge forBrookland is that replenishments tend to be very fragmented due to the diverse range oforders received from the stores. Therefore, Brookland needs to run a coherent supplychain process across different goods' categories in order to efficiently serve different retailformats of the Dirk van den Broek chain.Technology and Implementation DetailsSince 1995, a legacy version of the Aldata supply chain management softwaremaintained by a third-party was in place. In 2001, Brookland needed to replace theexisting implementation with a packaged software solution, because support of its legacysystem was discontinued and the company required a new application to better matchtheir business process requirements. Dirk van den Broek's IT Director and Brookland'sInformation Manager were the principal project influencers, but trust from the boardmanagement was essential to fund the initiative. The contribution and support providedby Line of Business Executives (LOB) was also important, although LOB were not themain drivers for the implementation.The selection process of the new system, performed with the support of IBM, was mainlybased on functionalities provided by the different applications under evaluation andsupport level. Key users participating in the solution selection process included differentorganisational layers, such as a warehouse manager responsible for operations in twowarehouses and order pickers. Brookland decided to deploy Aldata G.O.L.D. Stock 5.01as this application provided the best fit to Brookland' process requirements, and Aldatacommitted to further customise its application in order to fully match Brookland’srequirements. As of June 2008, Brookland manages six warehouses with the softwaresolution and upgraded to Aldata G.O.L.D. Stock 5.03, which is a warehouse and logisticsexecution management software that is part of a larger supply chain management suite.In essence, the application provides the following functionalities:Inbound and outbound management: functionalities include planning (for examplereplenishment and routing), goods' reception, storage management, orderpreparation, allocation, and dispatch.Warehouse labor managementTraceability management, including control of information flows and goodsmovements in the logistics network and event management (alert detection,notification and response).Following a workshop and a vendor evaluation process executed during 2004, Brooklandre-designed its master data management infrastructure based upon stronger ERPintegration and process consolidation in 2005 to optimise their supply chain performanceand accuracy of automated processes. With the objective of minimising supply chain139