Super Retail Group has seen a 20 per cent reduction in inventory and safety stock within its Boating, Camping and Fishing (BCF) brand from a cloud software pilot it did in 2012. The company decided to pilot the JDA Demand and Fulfilment supply chain software to integrate product demand planning and increase customer focus across its seven retail brands. Super Retail Group’s brands include BCF, Amart Sports, Fishing Camping Outdoors (FCO), Ray’s Outdoors, Rebel and Supercheap Auto. The BCF pilot included 1.4 million stock keeping units (SKUs). Because there are huge amounts of fishing products, it proved to be a good test case, said Super Retail Group’s supply chain and inventory management program manager, Nat Cooper. “With 68 different possible targeted fishing species in Australia – more than anywhere in the world – the BCF business sells a lot of different lures,” he said. After six months of implementation, there was a 20 per cent reduction in inventory holdings and safety stock within BCF. “We’ve made a significant shift in our organisational thinking and culture to become more customer-centric,” said Cooper. “JDA enables us to have that capability and, in time, we’ll be getting the right feeds and visibility from the loyalty programs. That data will feed into our demand planning capability.” Super Retail Group CIO resigns How Super Retail Group is dealing with digital disruption Consumer cloud is the ticket for cost conscious CIOs: report Two years on, Super Retail Group has rolled out the JDA Demand and Fulfilment software across its Leisure division and is piloting the solution in a number of its Auto business units such as Supercheap Auto. “We are now mid-way through the [Auto business] pilot. We had a full scale rollout planned on the basis of the successes from the pilot groups. That [rollout] is being executed in two iterations so we will be finalising full rollout of the Demand and Fulfilment tool in the Auto business by October 31, 2014,” he said. In addition, the retailer has begun a pilot of JDA’s Enterprise Planning software tool within the Leisure division. The software allows users to optimise product inventories and balance sales goals. “It’s a small implementation and we are not going too far away from the merchandise planning processes that we had within the business. It’s now more systemic and capable of delivering real time outputs to those [business] plans,” said Cooper. The retailer elected to launch the software in a cloud environment back in 2012 to minimise the company’s risk exposure and financial investments. According to Super Retail Group’s supply chain solutions manager, Keith Harrison, it had been talking about the need to move onto a single demand-and-fulfilment platform for a long period of time. “It’s a significant investment for a retail organisation, and it demands a high return,” said Harrison. “With JDA cloud services, we knew exactly what we were buying. There was a fixed price and it was very easy to do.” Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia Related content feature 10 most popular IT certifications for 2023 Certifications are a great way to show employers you have the right IT skills and specializations for the job. These 10 certs are the ones IT pros are most likely to pursue, according to data from Dice. By Sarah K. White May 26, 2023 8 mins Certifications Careers interview Stepping up to the challenge of a global conglomerate CIO role Dr. Amrut Urkude became CIO of Reliance Polyester after his company was acquired by Reliance Industries. He discusses challenges IT leaders face while transitioning from a small company to a large multinational enterprise, and how to overcome them. By Yashvendra Singh May 26, 2023 7 mins Digital Transformation Careers brandpost With the new financial year looming, now is a good time to review your Microsoft 365 licenses By Veronica Lew May 25, 2023 5 mins Lenovo news Alteryx works in generative AI for speedy analytics results OpenAI integration and AI wizardry for report generation are aimed at making Alteryx’s analytics products more accessible. By Jon Gold May 25, 2023 3 mins Analytics Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe