• Background
• Interview

Background

ERP solutions can be tricky to sell to prospective clients as they are very difficult to demonstrate and therefore the benefits to the client cannot be properly illustrated. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) solved this problem in April of this year when it opened the Retail Solutions Centre (RSC) in order to provide leading European retailers with the opportunity to explore visions for their businesses with retail experts. The RSC is an interactive facility with a fictional retail outlet called T&K stores which enables companies to experience and challenge best practice systems and processes, helping them to break down barriers which exist in their own business. Experts are available to address issues such as consumer demand, e-commerce, store and warehouse operations, and category management. The facility is based in Swindon and is the first of a number of centres planned around the world with the US and Asia next on the list. SAP R/3 Retail provides the backbone for T&K’s operations, running on a Windows NT-powered data centre implemented by Data General who worked with PwC to design the infrastructure incorporating enterprise NT servers, fibre channel storage and thin/client architecture. Data General took responsibility for the technical and commercial risk through its de-risking methodology, which is a collection of practices that sees Data General take the risk of a project away from the user. This methodology is founded on Data General’s SAP Retail benchmark programme which, amongst other promises, uses Windows NT to reduce TCO.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a market leading SAP implementation and retail partner with more than 7,000 SAP consultants and over 20 projects around the world. Data General moved into NT in 1994 when it changed from Motorola processors to Intel. The company is now the world-leading supplier of enterprise NT systems (according to a 1999 study carried out by IDC) thanks to the AViiON server family – enterprise servers with the ability to run up to eight Intel CPUs. Windows NT and 2000 explorer spoke to David Thomas (DT), European Retail Partner for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Jason Smith (JS), Commercial Sector Marketing Manager for Data General, about the Retail Solutions Centre.

Interview

Exp: This project was not an upgrade or a change to an existing system, it was a brand new concept. What exactly does it involve?

DT: The RSC is an interactive facility with a fictional retail business called T&K Stores where retailers can experience an authentic retail environment powered by SAP Retail running on Windows NT. The RSC has four areas:

• A T&K department store, complete with a range of food, drink, apparel and promotional items
• T&K’s warehouse, complete with racking
• T&K’s head office, with all management reports
• A home where consumers shop online at T&K

DG is also supplying additional equipment, which is due to be installed later this year, to support data warehouse, supply chain and e-commerce applications. They designed, supplied and implemented the complete infrastructure, from processing and storage hardware to the WAN that supports it.

JS: PwC came to us with a very simple brief: build a best practice retail IT environment running SAP Retail, and complimentary applications on NT, capable of powering 200 retail outlets. Aside from this we had carte blanche and provided the complete concept design for the infrastructure implementation and complete system design for each component and the overall solution. We also supplied the pre-configured systems based on our SAP Retail Benchmarking to cope with the level of transaction specified by PwC.

Exp: Why did you choose Data General?

DT: Data General provides a fully-rounded service from inception and design through to delivery and support. Their approach to an installation is from a consultative perspective, working very closely with our own IT staff. This reduces any chance of a mismatch between expectation and reality. The support of this technology through RELiiON can be fully provided by DG, removing the need to aggressively monitor the installation, and placing the onus of support with DG. Often, faults are reported, appraised and fixed remotely without any user intervention at all. Technologically, their fibre-channel RAID arrays remove the traditional bottleneck in a database-intensive application, allowing DG to effectively ‘underwrite’ the performance of the system they have designed and implemented.

Exp: Were there any stumbling blocks in the project?

DT: In an implementation such as the RSC, there will always be areas where we would want more machines/power/facilities due to the constantly changing demands of our demonstration facility, but no actual stumbling blocks. DG have been able to meet our demands and act on our behalf in resourcing the extra facilities from third parties. We did experience some frustrations in lead times depending upon the time of year that the machines were ordered but DG loaned us equipment, almost always to a similar specification to that ordered, meaning that development work was able to carry on.

JS: We didn’t really come across any stumbling blocks, we avoided them by planning, planning and planning. DG never ships a server without certifying it capable of performing the number of transactions demanded by the user. In terms of the other challenges, the de-risking approach means that whenever we see an overlap or a potential risk, we take charge of it. The result is that PwC had several partners involved, but only one taking responsibility for the complete infrastructure implementation.

Exp: Why did you choose DG to FM the project as well as supply the hardware?

DT: In any large project there are three main areas of concern: the overlap between the infrastructure provider and the application, the overlap between the infrastructure provider and the systems integrator and the overlap between the integrator and the application. In these overlaps, you will find all of the risk associated with a project. DG identified and managed the risks between itself and the infrastructure, application and the systems integrator, and prime contracted the hardware installation at the RSC. The benefits of this way of working are that we only had one company to deal with on the IT implementation thereby avoiding several different companies, all blaming each other, and causing delays.

David Thomas and Jason Smith were interviewed by Andy O’Brien

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