Business Critical IT Services for E-Commerce

Richard Surman, Head of IT, Crew Clothing Company

Richard Surman, Head of IT, Crew Clothing Company

For many years, I have worked for Retail organizations that have been embarking on a journey of change within their IT environment. These changes predominantly included either an upgrade or replacement of a number of their core systems such as the ERP system, website platform, or both. Having been involved and led the delivery of a number of these initiatives, it was very clear that the underpinning project requirements had always been underestimated leading to longer delivery timeframes, subsequently increasing costs to the business. Additional frustrations ensued around the business due to the lack of visibility of any new solutions due to the big bang go-live requirements and the need to continue to operate legacy systems for lengthy time periods.

Starting a new role at the end of the first Covid lockdown allowed me to reflect on what pain points have experienced in previous organizations and what we can do to change the way we work in the future. With the advancement of technology and the users’ expectation for simple solutions that can be used with little training and experience, I started to question the reason for having large solutions that perform multiple tasks and require significant support overhead.The risks of an outage affected multiple departments and the level of bespoke developments needed to meet current and future business needs were vast.

Having reviewed the IT environment with new ideas and aspirations, the clear immediate requirement was to replace an aging ERP solution which was overdue an upgrade and required a huge amount of housekeeping in order to keep it operational. Previously a like-for-like replacement would have been the go-to option but what I wanted to achieve was to show the organization that change could be much faster with the introduction of smaller component systems that are better integrated and deliver parts of the overall solution. Making the environment modular does add some complexity around system integrations however these integrations do exist but are usually subcomponents of the larger ERP solution and therefore not generally referenced outside of the IT department.

All solutions being introduced to the organization now have the capability to seamlessly integrate with our existing environment but have the flexibility to be customized quickly and effectively to meet our business requirements. Each solution is based on cloud-based technology allowing us to reduce our internal requirements for a specialized team of infrastructure architects and enabling us to utilize the SaaS model for all solutions, therefore, receiving all updates and enhancements automatically and giving us the ability to use the product for as long as needed and when no longer fit for purpose, we simply select a replacement and switch across rapidly.

Each solution is based on cloud-based technology enabling us to utilize the saas model for all solutions, therefore, receiving all updates and enhancements automatically

Two years down the line and we are well on our way to completing our ERP migration with separate component solutions which deliver greater capabilities to the business and far more automation than we would have ever been able to achieve with a likefor- like replacement. We are working on multiple project streams due to the ability to engage with multiple partners at one time delivering solutions in line with one another and staggering the introduction of new systems as we gradually integrate them into our operations.

Looking ahead our next opportunities are going to be focussing on the introduction of AI-based technology that will empower the organization to make faster business decisions ensuring that the business is able to be confident with the information being provided and that all decisions are based around hard factual evidence from solutions that are fully integrated and deliver the same results.