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Building the New Era of Luxury Retail with IT Portfolio Management in the Cloud
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Retail
- Consumer Goods
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Retail Store Automation
- Demand Planning & Forecasting
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
The Challenge
The multinational luxury fashion company faced challenges due to rapid expansion and major acquisitions. The company was under pressure from global competition and growing costs. The company's IT leadership team wanted the Information Systems (IS) teams to have visibility into their portfolios to be able to develop project plans and future IT strategies to support the company's ambitious business transformation goals. The piecemeal process in place at that time involved manual updates to a Microsoft® Access® database, visualization in the Visio® modeling tool and PowerPoint® for presentations. Information on the portfolio was updated twice a year— not a good basis for road mapping and investment decisions that needed to be made on the turn of dime.
About The Customer
The customer is a leading multinational luxury fashion group that has grown over the years through acquisitions. The company was started by six leatherworkers in a New York City loft in 1941 and has since become an international powerhouse through several major acquisitions in the past decade. These acquisitions, worth more than $3 billion, have posed a risky prospect in the luxury fashion business, where competition is coming from all directions. The company's IT leadership team wanted the Information Systems (IS) teams to have visibility into their portfolios to be able to develop project plans and future IT strategies to support the company's ambitious business transformation goals.
The Solution
In 2014, the luxury fashion group turned to Alfabet, the only comprehensive solution in the industry for managing IT planning and enterprise architecture. With acquisitions on the horizon, the company asked for help from Software AG Global Consulting Services to achieve faster gain with less pain and harness Alfabet as an agile, cloud-based platform for all that would follow. Now, as part of a wildly successful digital transformation, Alfabet is the company’s gateway to next-generation planning, system transparency, omni-channel consumer experience and supply chain optimizations. Alfabet is also at the heart of the luxury fashion group’s initiative to save $100 million in IT costs in just three years.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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