Case Study

Multi-billion Dollar Retailer Orders With Amentra

Service:
Systems Development
Industry:
Retail
Engagement:
Full Lifecycle & Mentoring
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80% reduction in store ordering, 75% reduction in training, plus 300% increase in order size

Before Amentra

A major retailer was utilizing a packaged solution in each store to order goods from its distribution centers. Administrative time spent entering and processing orders skyrocketed due to the poor functionality, reliability, and performance of the solution. Additionally, training and issue resolution costs sharply increased as a result of the ineffective user interface.

After Amentra

  • 80% reduction in weekly store ordering time
  • 75% reduction in manager training time for store ordering system
  • 300% increase in maximum order size
  • Ability to support multiple order cycles per week for high volume stores
  • Deployed successfully in over 2600 stores nation-wide

Evolution of the business process

Amentra helped the retailer overcome several critical business challenges.

Inventory Efficiency
The retailer needed to shorten its order cycle to reduce its exposure to over- and under-stocked inventory conditions. Amentra heavily optimized the performance of the system to allow store managers to enter twice as many orders each week in less time than a single order previously required.
Personnel Costs
High turn-over among store managers meant that training costs were greatly magnified across the organization. Amentra designed a greatly simplified user interface that reduced ramp-up time for managers and could effectively be displayed on a handheld device from Symbol, further increasing the intuitiveness of the ordering process.
System Management
The retailer extensively customizes its merchandising system on an ongoing basis to increase business functionality and needed a system that could support its large store growth projections. Amentra reused the existing business logic on the iSeries platform by integrating it with the new ordering system to maximize reuse and consistency. Later, Amentra integrated the ordering system with a single sign-on solution to simplify user management and to support growth objectives

Applied technologies and expertise

Amentra quickly addressed the performance and usability issues by designing a utilitarian, HTML-based user interface that could deploy the ordering application to back office systems and handheld devices. Amentra worked directly with business leaders at the retailer to identify and prioritize critical requirements for the system and then created a system design based on distributed computing best practices and design patterns that would allow maximum scalability, maintainability, and performance across a heterogeneous networking environment that included frame relay, satellite, and wireless transmission protocols.

Amentra mentored several client developers with no prior Java implementation experience throughout the process, training them in Java syntax, distributed computing concepts, and J2EE implementation in the WebLogic environment. The Amentra mentoring approach allowed the developers to quickly become active contributors to the design process and vital members of the implementation team. Amentra implemented the system in a WebLogic Server cluster on IBM servers running the AIX operating system. The system leveraged extensive amounts of business logic already implemented on the retailer's iSeries platform.

The project was concluded on-time and on-budget, leaving the retailer's developers capable of maintaining the new system as well as designing and implementing new J2EE-based systems without outside assistance.

Technologies used

  • WebLogic Server with Clustering
  • DB2 for iSeries
  • Oracle
  • Symbol PDT
  • SunONE LDAP Server
  • Struts

"Amentra allowed us to hit our business deadlines and built a system that we can cost effectively support internally." Vice President of Store Operations, Retailer