IBM Case Studies Global retail company Building a billion-dollar business through cloudbased managed services

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	Global retail company Building a billion-dollar business through cloudbased managed services IBM

Global retail company Building a billion-dollar business through cloudbased managed services

IBM

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries	Retail
Applicable Functions	Business Operation Sales & Marketing
Use Cases	Inventory Management Supply Chain Visibility
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	The retailer aims to become a global brand, open new stores and expand overseas. The company needed a way to enable dramatic growth without soaking up time, energy and effort on IT. The retailer had adopted cloud services as the best way to enable its business ambitions. Embracing cloud helped the company avoid CapEx on infrastructure, and removed the need to hire and retain a large technical team. In particular, cloud services effectively bring vendors’ technical maturity into the company, a useful bonus for a young business. The retailer chose to implement Oracle Financials, hosting the applications with IBM, and selected Oracle Retail Management System as the next step. Read More
About Customer	The customer is a growing, global retailer that stocks a vast array of products in each of its hundreds of stores, spread across the world. The company generates annual sales of over $200 million and aims to become a global brand, open new stores and expand overseas. Despite being relatively young and bursting with entrepreneurial spirit, the company also runs a sophisticated, efficient retail operation. Alongside product decisions are inventory, logistics, financial and related business challenges. The retailer is growing its store footprint at around 20 percent annually, and is considering opening franchised outlets to help expand its reach even more quickly. Read More
Solution	To support worldwide growth this retailer selected IBM® Cloud Managed Services™ for Oracle Applications. Today, the company is able to focus on building its business, free of IT infrastructure concerns. The retailer looked at IBM Cloud Managed Services for Oracle Applications (CMS4Oracle) for the Oracle Retail Merchandising System solution. Moving to CMS4Oracle offered the ability to extend the systems environment and add extra levels of service, cloud and management functionality to the landscape. For example, CMS4Oracle includes service-level agreements covering the retailer’s critical business issues, such as data security, resilience, redundancy and more. The cloud architecture provides the flexibility and excellent scalability needed to handle extraordinarily high growth, while the maturity of the offering ensures service quality through standardization and automation. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Retail

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Inventory Management

Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

The retailer aims to become a global brand, open new stores and expand overseas. The company needed a way to enable dramatic growth without soaking up time, energy and effort on IT. The retailer had adopted cloud services as the best way to enable its business ambitions. Embracing cloud helped the company avoid CapEx on infrastructure, and removed the need to hire and retain a large technical team. In particular, cloud services effectively bring vendors’ technical maturity into the company, a useful bonus for a young business. The retailer chose to implement Oracle Financials, hosting the applications with IBM, and selected Oracle Retail Management System as the next step.

About Customer

The customer is a growing, global retailer that stocks a vast array of products in each of its hundreds of stores, spread across the world. The company generates annual sales of over $200 million and aims to become a global brand, open new stores and expand overseas. Despite being relatively young and bursting with entrepreneurial spirit, the company also runs a sophisticated, efficient retail operation. Alongside product decisions are inventory, logistics, financial and related business challenges. The retailer is growing its store footprint at around 20 percent annually, and is considering opening franchised outlets to help expand its reach even more quickly.

Solution

To support worldwide growth this retailer selected IBM® Cloud Managed Services™ for Oracle Applications. Today, the company is able to focus on building its business, free of IT infrastructure concerns. The retailer looked at IBM Cloud Managed Services for Oracle Applications (CMS4Oracle) for the Oracle Retail Merchandising System solution. Moving to CMS4Oracle offered the ability to extend the systems environment and add extra levels of service, cloud and management functionality to the landscape. For example, CMS4Oracle includes service-level agreements covering the retailer’s critical business issues, such as data security, resilience, redundancy and more. The cloud architecture provides the flexibility and excellent scalability needed to handle extraordinarily high growth, while the maturity of the offering ensures service quality through standardization and automation.

Impact #1	Eliminates risk of downtime and outages
Impact #2	Enables easy scalability according to market needs
Impact #3	Helps ensure the business can reach its ambitious growth goals

Impact #1

Eliminates risk of downtime and outages

Impact #2

Enables easy scalability according to market needs

Impact #3

Helps ensure the business can reach its ambitious growth goals

Benefit #1	The retailer is growing its store footprint at around 20 percent annually

Benefit #1

The retailer is growing its store footprint at around 20 percent annually

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Overview

Global retail company Building a billion-dollar business through cloudbased managed services

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit