Executives in Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore were using various accounting software brands, all of which were outdated. In addition, financial data was manually entered in Excel format, causing delays in key decisions due to inaccurate information. Bossini, a prominent Hong Kong-based apparel retailer, brand owner, and franchiser recognized that this current situation was no longer effective and thus initiated an ambitious enterprise-wide plan to resolve it.
Bossini’s first retail store was opened in 1987. Since then, the company has grown from a small-scale retailer to a well-known player in apparel retail, with more than 1,000 stores spread across around 20 countries. The main focus of Bossini is its popular “bossini” brand, which offers a wide range of casual clothing for men, women, and children known for their lively mix-and-match styles. Moving forward, Bossini plans to kick off a branding campaign next year by introducing refreshed logos. In addition, the company aims to open 100 new retail stores primarily in mainland China.
The firm’s capital budgeting, asset management, financial forecasting, budgeting, and investment assessments were all managed separately by its operations in different countries prior to investing in its systems. According to Andrew Ling, the director of information technology at Bossini, the retailer needed an integrated solution to bring financial transparency to its entire enterprise. Ling states that manual data feed and consolidation required a lot of labor and hindered effective and efficient decision-making processes.
Bossini, in addition to its four core base markets in Asia, also has extensive distribution networks in the Middle East and Latin America. With its plans for rapid expansion into international markets, the company sought to combine its financial systems and processes onto one unified platform. After evaluating multiple systems for a year, Bossini’s management team decided to use Oracle’s e-Business financial suite (EBS) to oversee its financial supply chain in its five regional centers: Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. Ling states, “The limited options resulting from recent market consolidation among top-tier vendors influenced our decision.”
According to the company, our corporate IT standard favors Oracle DBMS as the preferred database engine. The Oracle implementation will support approximately 100 users and offer a unified and accurate view of Bossini’s financial information, enhancing overall visibility into the company’s operations.
The first phase of implementation began in March, and the target completion date for the 49-week rollout is February 2007. We have already completed analysis, design, and system integration testing,” Ling explains. “We are currently conducting user-acceptance testing and data conversion.” Ling adds that if the results of the user-acceptance test are positive, Bossini will implement the solution at its Hong Kong regional center this month, followed by other countries within the next three months. According to Ling, having better data will enable Bossini to address regional statutory requirements, corporate governance, internal audit control needs, and ensure accurate financial reporting.
The implementation of the system is anticipated to assist the firm in making prompt decisions in accordance with shifting market demands, thereby enhancing its competitiveness and profitability on a global scale. Bossini emphasizes that the advantages of this system will be evident at the store level, which holds significant importance for the company. The new system enables managers in Taiwan to effortlessly access financial data at an overall level whenever necessary. In contrast, the previous systems necessitated users to retrieve information from each separate location, often leading to inaccurate data.
By having access to real-time data on a specific location or region, managers can now accurately monitor sales volume and better understand supply chain demand throughout the entire enterprise. However, Bossini faced an unexpected obstacle during the transition to its new system – resistance to change. The company had to put in significant effort to convince independent offices in various countries to adopt a system chosen and managed by the Hong Kong headquarters.
Addressing concerns about additional manpower resources and overtime work that might be required to support the rollout, Ling states that finding a suitable product on the market was not as challenging as persuading the finance staff to use a new financial package. To overcome these concerns, workshops, debriefings, lobbying, case study references, and customer reference checks were conducted until the skeptics on the team were convinced of the benefits that Oracle EBS would bring to the company.
The benefits of the system are now becoming more noticeable. It has made Bossini’s regular financial reporting processes more efficient and has greatly improved the quarterly and monthly closing of the books. Prior to implementing the system, the company kept its financial records in a manual chart of accounts structure that was not standardized. As a result, it would often take three weeks to close the books and report the numbers, and this process was prone to errors. Additionally, the manual entry of financial data in Excel format from four different countries led to human error and discrepancies, causing further delays in consolidating the accounting books. Ling describes the previous 21-day lead time for closing the monthly accounting books as a difficult and time-consuming task. However, now they can easily access key financial information to make informed business decisions.
Bossini aims to shorten the time needed to report its financials to only a few days, allowing managers to quickly analyze the overall P&L performance in various locations. This improvement will enable them to address issues such as budget overruns or unmet sales targets at an earlier stage and make necessary corrective decisions. The implementation is expected to significantly decrease lead time for account consolidation by at least 70 percent, while enhancing compliance with regional statutory requirements, corporate governance, and internal audit control. Additionally, Bossini anticipates improved productivity and efficiency, as well as the ability to access key financial information anywhere and anytime for better budget control.
The retailer, known for its “bossini” brand of casual wear, plans to open 100 stores in mainland China. To streamline and automate its financial systems and processes across its five regional centers, Hong Kong-based apparel retailer Bossini has chosen the Oracle E-Business Suite Financials family of applications. This new system will provide Bossini with a single view of its financial information, enhancing decision-making and visibility into operations. Additionally, the improved data quality will aid in meeting statutory requirements, corporate governance, and internal audit control needs, according to Oracle’s retail industry director, Gladys Lau. Oracle Retail has also completed 60 implementations.
In other Oracle news, the company has completed over 60 implementations of Oracle Retail solutions at retailers worldwide in the first three quarters since establishing its new retail business unit in April 2005, as mentioned on their website: www.oracle.com. Additionally, Stylophane, renowned for its Apparel Brand Popularity Search Index, has introduced the Stylophane Sales Analytics Tool (SSA) to provide real-time reporting of online sales data.
SSA provides advanced e-mail segmentation tools to enhance companies’ comprehension of customer behavior and use that information to drive sales. With SSA, companies can create e-mail lists from various sales reports, enabling them to target specific states, products, or categories for promotions. Additionally, they can reward loyal customers and identify buyer groups for new products. Furthermore, the sales summary report offers a comprehensive overview of daily sales, including comparisons to previous weeks and months.
According to Stylophane, sales reports include product names and thumbnail images to help decision-makers easily identify the best performing and under-performing products. The tool costs $79 per month and a free 30-day trial is available on the website www.stylophanesa.com. For more information, contact 415-351-1976.
Synchronics has released an updated version of its CounterPoint SQL retail management solution for small- to medium-sized retailers.
The latest update offers over 40 additional features that aim to improve the efficiency of users’ businesses. This includes the introduction of a loyalty program, enabling users to reward loyal customers by granting them points that they can later use for future purchases or special incentives. Additionally, the update also introduces time cards and the ability to clock in or out from any CounterPoint workstation. Synchronics, a company recently acquired by Radiant Systems, also provides other products such as CPOnline, a fully integrated e-commerce solution, and CPGateway, a service that can return credit card authorizations in less than two seconds.
The North American lifestyle brand, Roots, has launched a new electronic gift card program at its retail locations in the United States and Canada. This program is made possible through a partnership with Ernex, a division of Moneris Solutions Corp., which provides real-time loyalty and stored-value gift card solutions. With the new system, sales associates will be able to conveniently process payments for both merchandise and gift cards using a single terminal.
Ernex will collaborate with the company to facilitate real-time promotions within its gift card solutions, such as “swipe n’ win” sweepstakes programs, personalized receipt coupons, and custom receipt messages. As a side note, Roots recently activated 50,000 gift cards as part of a promotional campaign for American Express. According to Michael Budman, co-founder of Roots, the sales of business-to-business gift cards are gaining importance for the company.
