Charles Tyrwhitt upgrades IT platform for expansion
By Retail Technology | Thursday July 31 2014
The British menswear brand is investing in ERP technology built around Microsoft Dynamics for Retail to support its multichannel international ambitions
With its sights set on the American, European and Australian markets, British heritage menswear brand and multichannel retailer Charles Tyrwhitt, has commissioned an entire systems overhaul to enable the delivery of a consistent consumer experience across all touch points.
The retailer, with a turnover of £160m, is driving a global transformation project that will elevate the brand’s strategy for multichannel, international expansion.
Centralising business data
Charles Tyrwhitt’s ERP partner, K3 Retail, will deliver a unified and fully integrated global platform based on Microsoft Dynamics AX. The system will manage the entire international business, with a focus on the centralisation of all business data.
Once implemented, the retail system is expected to drive customer engagement by centralising the fundamental omnichannel elements that impact the customer - product, transactions and channels. This will be further supported by K3’s business intelligence suite, to unify and manage all business data for global insight.
Data accuracy
“Our biggest challenge is the validation and accuracy of data across the business. The existing systems are out-dated, disparate and restrictive,” commented Simon Kerry, CIO at Charles Tyrwhitt. “We needed a platform that would enable growth on an international level and drive a better customer experience at the front end, while driving efficiency at the back-end.”
He continued, “Microsoft Dynamics AX will do just this and in addition, it can be rolled out to new territories across the world, reducing barriers of entry into new markets with local language, currency and distribution.”
Phased roll-out
Phase one of the project started in November 2013 and will be complete by the end of May 2014. The project is expected to span an 24 month period, inclusive of four initial rollout phases: finance, buying and merchandising, retail and call centre.
The project is based around K3’s ax|is fashion module, a conceptn-to-consumer solution built on Microsoft Dynamics for Retail which provides end-to-end lifecycle management, from initial garment design and production all the way through to channel allocation and merchandising.
Big data testing and targeting
Charles Tywhitt has been on a technology drive for some time now. In September 2013, deployed a consumer experience solution that uses big data analytics to create personalised online experiences for web testing and targeting.
The retailer wanted to increase the number of concurrent tests it could set-up and run, improving business information and used technology by Monetate to run an unlimited number of campaigns per month across key audience segments.
The new solution also allowed the brand to start targeting different customer segments based on parameters such as location, weather, previous behaviour, inbound campaign, device and custom analytics or customer relationship management (CRM) data.
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