American Golf virtualises ERP application

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Golf equipment retailer American Golf has virtualised its ERP application to integrate a recent acquisition, SW Golf into the company.

The Citrix desktop application used to distribute access to the ERP system throughout the enlarged company was deployed by NEC IT Solutions.

According to American Golf, the move has saved it over £100,000 in not having to replace the whole ERP system.

Speaking to CIO UK, Phil Barker, head of IT at American Golf said the acquisition of SW Golf, Europe’s largest online golf equipment retailer, was driven by the need for the company to up its game in the ecommerce space.

The retailer has around 90 stores across the UK and previously had an online presence, but SW Golf’s sales were around four times the size of American Golf’s own online retail returns.

The virtualised ERP system will help the company reconcile the two company’s stock systems, but the quick deployment will bring SW Golf’s back end systems up to date quickly, especially in terms of reporting, he said.

“SW Golf was around five to 10 years behind,” said Barker.

The online retailer has a much larger stock offering, than the high-street operation and so a big part of the project was adding 11,000 extra SKUs to American Golf’s stock system.

The company uses a Microsoft Dynamics store system, which is now running across the whole merged company, allowing timely reports to be distributed to strategic managers.

“It gives us a much clearer idea of our merchandising requirements across the whole company,” said Barker.