CFL ventured into the retail business in April 2008 with 20 rural retail
stores in the state of Andhra Pradesh as a pilot run. SAP was the core ERP of
its manufacturing business then and data from the POS application was uploaded
to SAP on regular intervals. However, CFL retail business faced a lot of
challenges in day-to-day routine operations, including: Delay in information
availability on items to service customers; POS Break down in Peak periods; Data
replication from Store to HO and vice a versa; Inefficient Inventory Management;
Statutory requirements at POS leading to manual billing thus leading to higher
customer billing time at POS; Internal controls & audit trail; and Poor MIS.
It decided to expand its rural retail presence and targeted to achieve 300+
retail stores in Andhra Pradesh by March 2009. CFL also decided to get into the
rural lifestyle business. With the above challenges on hand, there was a need
for a retail application which could cater to both Agri Retail as well as
Lifestyle Retail Business. LS Retail and Microsoft Dynamics NAV were implemented
to cover Point of Sales; Stores Back Office; Warehouse Inventory Management;
Purchase; and Finance and other back-end operations at HO. Some of the
challenges faced in this transition included: Change Management for the CFL team
that was from a manufacturing background; challenges in implementing rural
retail processes; statutory requirement compliance; faster roll out of stores;
Integration with SAP on various business areas which meant techno-functional
consultants from Microsoft Dynamics NAV, LS Retail and SAP had to work together.
Project Specs |
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Implementation Partner |
PricewaterhouseCoopers |
Post deployment the company now has a retail solution that is an end to end
retail solution catering to Agri as well as lifestyle business requirements;
gives farmer all sorts of information at POS; offers special promotions/schemes
for farmers. However, the most pertinent benefit to farmers is the elimination
of middlemen from the supply chain. The project also strives to ensure that all
that is needed by a rural customer is easily accessible be it products or
services and help him to earn more & increase his standard of living in rural
India.
In future, CFL wants to strengthen its retail presence in rural retail market
aiming to grow to more than 500 stores. The focus will be in the States of
Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra.