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CXO Accent
Pantaloon uses IT to boost its retail business
Pantaloon Retail is using IT as a strategic tool to achieve
its ambitious growth plans.
Being a successful retail company, we plan to grow our business in a big way
this year. We intend to achieve this with the help of new outlets and business
ventures. Ever since our entry into the retail segment in 1997, we have diversified
into many retail business lines and now have 13 Pantaloon stores, nine hypermarket
discount stores (Big Bazaars), 13 Food Bazaars, and one central mall. The last
has restaurants and shopping arcades under one roof. Further, the number of
the outlets is rising at a good pace.
We realised early that IT would play a critical role in our organisation’s
productivity, and hence we crafted a roadmap to ensure that our information
infrastructure would scale up as required to support our business growth.
Going by our IT strategy roadmap, we plan to deploy secure nation-wide connectivity.
Accordingly, we have also built a sizeable server infrastructure, created a
security architecture from scratch, and deployed financial management software.
We are also in the process of deploying an ERP system, setting up a B2B portal,
putting up a Disaster Recovery (DR) site, using Business Intelligence (BI) tools,
implementing VoIP, and installing CCTVs at all locations which can be monitored
from a central console and location.
Along the way
 Beginning
as a textile and fabric manufacturer in 1987, our retail business kicked off
with the first Pantaloon store in Kolkata in 1997. Other than this, we also
own brands such as John Miller and Annabelle, and have purchased a few companies
such as Indigo Nation and Scullers to add to our business portfolio. We plan
to build 20 more outlets in the next few months as part of our business expansion
plans.
The IT strategy has been framed keeping in mind our ambitious growth plans.
These include creating a robust and reliable information infrastructure, and
networking all offices and outlets so that they can exchange information in
real-time. We also need to secure customer and financial information with no
scope for unauthorised access, and operations must be simple across the organisation.
Special emphasis was given to scalability and to ways in which the business
can reduce costs while building IT infrastructure. Accordingly, we made a number
of deployments, and have plans to introduce large-scale deployments in areas
such as connectivity, security, server infrastructure, networked storage and
enterprise applications.
Connecting the company
We realised that due to the company’s geographical spread and the nature
of our business, the key to the success of our IT strategy lay in the ability
to network all nation-wide company locations in a secure and organised manner.
Connectivity for us means connecting our head office (HO) in Mumbai, regional
offices in Kolkata and Bangalore, a manufacturing unit and central warehouse
at Tarapur (Thane district), zonal offices, and retail outlets in various other
locations. Thus, we had to design the network considering the geographically-dispersed
workforce and the fact that they would have uninterrupted access to enterprise
applications from any corner of the country.
Earlier, all locations, including retail outlets and warehouses, were not connected
directly to the HO. A group of 3-4 outlets in a particular vicinity were connected
to the nearest regional or zonal office, which in turn was connected to the
HO.
Considering the need for scalability, and the complexity that could arise from
an organisation such as ours, we created the blueprint of a VPN architecture
to link all our offices to the HO. The VPN network will link in phases all company
locations, including retail outlets and the manufacturing unit. In the first
phase, we have connected 24 locations. In the second, we plan to connect 25
more, depending on the growth pattern. The last mile connectivity will be through
radio frequency.
Keeping information secure
Information security is an important consideration in the IT strategy because
the network needs to handle a large amount of company and customer information.
After careful analysis, we decided to use multi-function device-based security
instead of point solutions. After evaluating products from companies such as
Fortinet CheckPoint, NetScreen, and CyberGuard, we chose to deploy a solution
called FG500A from Fortinet. The device allows unified capabilities and is easy
to manage and monitor. We plan to use it at the perimeter.
Corporate data centre: The corporate data centre is situated at the HO and houses
12 servers for various enterprise applications, networked storage boxes, backup
tape libraries, security devices, and other networking devices such as routers
and switches. The data centre backbone is based on optic fibre. The nation-wide
network is monitored and managed from this set-up, and a separate IT team monitors
network aspects such as connectivity, uptime, continuity of service, quality
of service and utilisation.
The apps do the work: For any retail organisation, point-of-sale (PoS) terminals
are necessary. We have developed a PoS application in-house and evolved it over
time across all retail outlets including malls and food markets. Now we plan
to have an ERP system to standardise our retail applications.
We have evaluated demos of solutions such as SAP Retail, and will soon make
the purchase decision. We also plan to use other applications such as a B2B
portal, and a BI and data warehouse tool for which we have evaluated Cognos.
Apart from these, we are testing VoIP applications, and plan to introduce video
conferencing. We intend to deploy a network of CCTV cameras at all locations.
This network will be managed from a central location in Mumbai. As far as business
continuity measures are concerned, we use a backup server and tape libraries
for archiving data. We will set up a remote DR site soon.
Although we are still in the process of setting up new systems, we have taken
steps towards making the customer experience in our stores a pleasant one. We
noticed that due to long queues, customers leave trolleys full of goods and
walk out, which is a business loss. We have provided some staff at a few Big
Bazaar outlets with handheld scanners. Thus, while customers are still in the
queue, their goods are scanned, so by the time they reach the cash counter they
just have to pay and move on.
Business boosters
We expect several business benefits to accrue from the enhanced network. As
there will be a free flow of information between the HO and other outlets, it
will be easier to create sales and analysis reports. It will also enable us
to store customer profiles; by using the BI tool, we can predict customer behaviour
and create targeted ad campaigns. For instance, if a particular shirt is in
demand at a particular store, we can make a requisition from a central location
to ensure that the particular item is available at that store. Features such
as these count since they trim cost and provide transparency in the supply chain.
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