Client Background

• Client: Retailer
  
• Industry: Clothing
• Area of operations: Africa
• Number of Employees: Over 10,000

Challenge

The retailer was operating on a 20-years-old Retek version 7 with extensive and complex customizations to support their core merchandising business operations, integrated with multiple systems, such as distribution center, store inventory management, POS, allocations, data warehouse, finance system, etc.

The client decided to embark on a project to upgrade to the latest version (V16) of Oracle Retail Application Suite, enabling robust systems that could support the future growth and expansion of the business in both, domestic and international markets.

Wipro was chosen as the preferred partner to implement Oracle Retail. This was not a simple upgrade due to the vast gap between both versions and the extensive customizations. We had to do a complete re-implementation of Oracle Retail with complete data migration from legacy and customization retrofit to this new version.

While we were heading to the cutover phase - a critical phase of the project -, which predictably requires on-site presence, we were caught by the pandemic COVID-19. All borders were closed, and international flights were suspended a week before the start of cutover and the imminent go-live in April 2020. Several alternatives were considered, but the possibility of postponing the go-live was the last option, as it would probably mean a delay of several months, with loss of momentum and the high possibility of the client losing the business case and opportunity due to delayed go-live.

Solution

The team collectively brainstormed and derived a detailed action focusing on 4Cs:

• Customer Objective: Our experience and teamwork spirit placed us in a good position to carry on with the plan. So all related activities for the cutover and go-live were executed by the team members at their homes to ensure customer objective was met successfully.
• Confidence: Wipro, together with the client, did a due diligence and created a risk assessment with mitigation plan, to support the decision with confidence.
• Communication & Collaboration: Effective communication was primary focus. So, twice a day project status meetings through Teams video call, SteerCo meetings every two days, technical support on alert mode, constructive mutual handing over between customer and Wipro were conducted appropriately.
• Coverage (24X7): We were available round the clock in order to minimize the client’s doubts and make sure they were always confident.

In order to minimize the business impact and disruption, the implementation was scheduled into 3 slots during a period of 10 days. Business users were able to continue working during that time, except for the last 4 days, which included a weekend.

Business Impact

With the successful upgrade to V16, a robust system, the retailer can better support the future growth and expansion of the business, in both domestic and international markets. Moreover, adoption of the business reference model and best practices will facilitate future implementations of other surrounding systems that are becoming out-of-date and hard to maintain.

Solution ensured:

• Reliability: Product support in place, seamless integration between systems, improved security features​
• Simplification: Process standardization, adoption of business reference model and best practices​
• Scalability – Enable future initiatives such as omni-channel, loyalty programs etc.