1. A journey into modern RMS
Case Study
9/4/2014
Sefam Pvt Ltd
MIS

2. Table of Contents
Objective ..................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction to Sefam ................................................................................................................... 3
Project Overview .......................................................................................................................... 4
Project Phases .............................................................................................................................. 6
Requirement Analysis ............................................................................................................... 6
Product Evaluation.................................................................................................................... 6
Gap Analysis and Requirement mapping .................................................................................... 7
Product definition for all brands ................................................................................................ 7
Data Entry ................................................................................................................................ 8
Backend Infrastructure Deployment (Data Center)...................................................................... 8
The Client (POS) end ................................................................................................................. 9
Networks and bandwidth ........................................................................................................ 10
Training .................................................................................................................................. 10
Challenges .............................................................................................................................. 11
Pilot Project Deployment Strategy ........................................................................................... 11
Mega Roll-out ......................................................................................................................... 12
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 13
2

3. 3
Objective
Our primary mission was to improve customer services through the state-of-the-art, modern retail
management systems, which would support the exponential growth of the company, and provide
better visibility on inventory, sales and operations which would eventually help us improve the sales
based on a focused customer requirement.
Introduction to Sefam
Sefam Pvt Ltd is Pakistan’s largest fashion house and fashion retailer. The company prides itself on
being the pioneers of branded fashion retail in Pakistan currently operating in excess of 400 points of
sales globally a majority of which are in Pakistan with the rest in Europe, Middle East, North America
and Asia.
Sefam was established in 1985 with the aim of manufacturing and retailing quality embroidered
fabrics, equal in quality to the best in the world, made in Pakistan. Sefam started out with the
Bareeze brand of embroidered designer fabrics. Now, the company has grown into an extensive
network of 12 diverse brands in the past 30 years, each of which are the largest in their category in
the Pakistani market.
All brands are independently managed units; each brand has its own dedicated state of the art
production facility and production management and planning teams employing 5000 people across
30 departments. Using a mix of in house production (majority) and selective outsourcing for
specialty products, Sefam is amongst the most versatile and adaptive fashion houses globally.
Sefam has opened 146 new points of Sales in the last 3 years in Pakistan with an average annual
retail network growth rate of 17%. Thus Sefam has an extensive, yet growing, retail network in the
top 25 populated cities of Pakistan.
In the last three years alone Sefam has launched 3 new brands (Urban Culture, RangJa and Super
Squad) to cater to the untapped, specialized consumer markets in the fashion industry.
In the last financial year that ended in June 2013, the total revenue of Sefam was a 6.9 billion
Pakistani Rupees, with a growth rate of 20%. While for this year ending in June 2014, the company is
on its track to cross the revenue mark of 8.2 billion Pakistani Rupees.

4. 4
Project Overview
Around 2 years back, Sefam Pvt ltd decided to undergo a major business transformation by replacing
its old legacy POS systems with modern retail management systems at all retail outlets across
Pakistan. As the company grew and spread tenfold over these years, the technological
advancements needed to support this growth could not keep up with the pace, hence resulting in
mismanagement, unavailability of data and reports needed to make timely decisions, increasing
number of misplaced items, lack of standardizations and overall loss of valuable time and resources.
In order to tackle these issues and stay abreast with the ever growing competition in the market,
Sefam decided it was time to let go off the old, in-house built legacy retail management system and
replace it with something more technologically sound, modern and advanced.
This was achieved with a well-planned and focused project plan which consisted of the following
phases:
1. Requirement Analysis
2. Product Evaluation
3. Gap Analysis and requirement mapping
4. Product definition
5. Data Entry
6. Hardware Sizing
7. Networks and bandwidth
8. Training
9. Pilot Project
10. Mega Roll-out
Besides the data center, NOC and the servers required for structuring the brands with their
respective warehouses, Sefam MIS team was able to deploy 380 POS systems at all shops all over the
country. After the pilot run, the mega roll out was completed in 35 days. The new systems
comprised of the following products:
 DELL Laptops (core i5, 4Gb Ram, 500 Gb Hard disk)
 Receipt Printers
 Barcode Scanners
 Laser Printers

5. This project was executed with the combined effort of the MIS department, the Sales operations
(from each brand), the Physical Audit team and the RMS vendor who was at the back-end
operations. The Physical audit team was the forerunner, who in conjunction with the sales
operations was carrying out physical audits for each shop before its RMS deployment. Followed by
this, the MIS team along with a set of Master trainer from the sales operations went to deploy the
RMS system, and floor walked to resolve support and understanding issues. These were three teams
which were distributed in the southern, northern and central regions.
At the backend, the MIS team along with the RMS vendor remained busy with POS configuration as
per the upcoming shops according to the deployment plan. The team was provided full support from
the administration to cover timely logistics for supplies to the three MIS teams in the field.
Thus, the company was able to achieve a very swift target, in modernizing its Retail Management
System – (Retail Pro). After which the company started benefitting on visibility of stocks, sales, and
retail order management.
5
This case study highlights the details of all the phases encountered in the project.

6. 6
Project Phases
Requirement Analysis
(Sept 2011 – Feb 2012)
A focused and thorough requirement analysis is crucial to the success of any project
implementation. To understand the business needs and problems being faced by the company, it
was important that a detailed study of the business processes of all the brands be conducted and
documented. For this purpose, a team of 4 senior business analysts was recruited who conducted
the requirement analysis of each brand individually. This was the first phase of the project, which
spanned over a period of 6 months. The analysts visited all the facilities related to Sefam where their
operations were being carried out. This included the finished goods’ warehouses, points of sale and
the head office. While the studies were being conducted, a comprehensi ve set of reports ranging
from paper trails to process flow charts were being organized as a part of the documentation
process. During this phase, an important achievement with regards to the barcode structure of the
fabric brands was accomplished. Previously, the absence of barcodes accounted for one of the main
problems as the items could not be tracked properly.
Product Evaluation
(Sept 2011 – Feb 2012)
In parallel to the requirement analysis study being carried out, the MIS along with the business
process owners began conducting the demos of the shortlisted RMS software, which were:
1. Retail Pro
2. Sentez Retail solution
3. Microsoft AX Retail
4. Imperial Soft Retail Solution
The software evaluation criteria were based on its level of technology as well as its core strength in
retail management system, mainly:

7. 7
1. Point of Sale capability
2. Warehouse capability
3. Planning capability
4. User-friendly interface
In addition to these points, they were looking for software which was easy to customize and had a
variety of filters and reports. Of course, all of this could only be achieved with a strong partner
backed by a strong principal company.
After numerous meetings, thorough consideration and mutual consensus of the senior management,
the decision was made in favor of Retail Pro in February 2012 and a formal purchase order was
awarded to them.
Gap Analysis and Requirement mapping
(Mar 2012 -May 2012)
According to the Requirement analysis research conducted earlier, one common RA document was
designed to address the business needs of all the brands at one platform. The compiled RA
document recorded business requirements under different heads like POS, Warehouse operations,
Users rights etc. This document was then handed over to the vendor, who provided feedback to us
with all sorts of gap checks stating their remarks against each requirement captured in our RA
document. Remarks comprised of how a certain business requirement would be catered to in Retail
Pro, which requirements required customizations and suggested the industry’s best practices for
carrying out certain retail/WH operations.
Product definition for all brands
(June 2012 – July 2012)
New product definitions were devised for all nine brands with a constant liaison with the brand
heads. These were designed by keeping in mind the reporting needs of all the brands. Also, Retail
Pro has its own way of defining a product by classifying it into three levels; Department, Class and

8. Sub-class. This was a great challenge and took the brands a lot of time to come down to one final
format of product definition for each. It was successfully done and as of today, all old and new
product entries into Retail Pro are being made as per these new definitions.
8
Data Entry
(July 2012 onwards)
A new, centralized data entry team within the MIS team was brought into existence. Its core
responsibility was to enter and maintain data relevant to the new retail management system. This
would include unique product codes, adjustment on quantity and price changes, employee code
creation, associates creation and periodic data cleansing activities.
This ensured data integrity and avoided redundancies.
Backend Infrastructure Deployment (Data Center)
(March 2012 – July 2012)
The new hardware requirement and its operating system were provided to the MIS. The initial
requirement given was for a couple of Quad Processor and dual processor Servers. But after talking
to various hardware brands, it was decided that the company should go ahead with the state-of-the-art
technology i.e. blade servers with SAN, and use boot from SAN technology, which was configured
with various RAID Arrays for its reliability. Keeping this in view, after a swift competition amongst
top Server brands, IBM Blade center-H along with its SAN was decided, and procured for the
requirement in March 2012. However, the equipment delivery was completed in June 2012. Hence,
a new data-center was brought into existence and the procured equipment was staged and
configured in the month of June and July.
For the warehouse processes, IBM severs were placed in each warehouse location, which would
facilitate its respective users from local databases and synchronize their transactions to regional
servers.

9. For redundancy, a recommended backup solution was deployed, which had a three layered backup
strategy. The first copy was placed in the Data Center, the second copy was placed in the remote
location and the third copy was placed in Tape Drive, which was then also moved to the remote
locations.
For the project, the network infrastructure was beefed up especially on the Radio links between
various Sefam facilities and offices. Complete cable revamp was conducted at all major Sefam
locations. All switches were provided with new uplinks, and the old switches were replaced with
Giga switches. Cascading was removed and all locations were moved to Star topology.
9
The figure stated below is indicating the system architecture for central and remote servers.
The Client (POS) end
(May 2012 onwards)
Considering the power conditions in the country, the company decided to use laptops at the POS,
since they can run on their battery for a considerable amount of time. This was deemed as an
innovative idea. Amongst the various laptops tested, the following were shortlisted:

10. 10
 Lenovo
 Dell
 HP
 Toshiba
After a strong competition between Dell and HP, the final order was placed to Dell in February
2012.For the POS, Dell laptops were procured and for the Warehouse and data entry system, Dell
PCs were acquired.
Networks and bandwidth
(February 2012)
Sefam’s legacy systems had been running on VPN circuit of 512 mb per shop, but these links were
very vulnerable as they had the tendency to remain down due to the PTCL copper links. It was
decided to use WiFi links for this project; hence a reputable ISP was engaged. This ISP managed to
deploy 40% of the shops, but at this point, it was realized that the WiFi links were not being given a
critical corporate treatment by the vendor. Hence in the middle of the project, the MIS team had to
face a big challenge, to roll back on the on the previous circuits. To deal with the vulnerability of the
legacy VPN circuits, the company had invested in to EVO WiFi devices, and for visibility, the MIS
team had erected the Network Monitoring System (NMS) which started giving real time scenarios of
the shops which did not have connectivity.
Training
(June 2012)
To ensure a smooth and efficient performance on the new software, multiple sessions of training
were provided to different levels of users.
The first round of training commenced on the 9th of June, 2012 and was conducted by the vendor,
System Plus. The training spanned over a period of 10 days. This session was aimed at training the
sales staff and the warehouse staff on using their respective modules. A complete overview of the
new RMS was presented to the attendees complemented with hands on practice of the end users.

11. The second phase of the training session comprised the vendor and the MIS team. The MIS
personnel were given a full hands-on, technical training session which included education on the
creation of POS, setting of POS on the server and multiple support functions.
The third round of training session was provided right before the country wide roll -out. According to
the initial plan, this training was to be conducted individually for each brand but due to the
management’s stern decision on extremely tight deadlines, a combined training was arranged for all
brands. The concept of ‘Train the Trainer’ was established and ‘master trainers’ were developed in
which the vendor and the MIS team trained select persons from the sales staff who in turn trained
the rest of their staff.
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Challenges
A few challenges faced by the MIS team on remote connectivity during deployment were as follows:
 Allowing multiple users to connect on the same server without compromising bandwidth.
 Ensure network uptime all time for polling structure.
 Test various ECM polling cycles to ensure transfer of documents / inventory and sales data.
 Provide remote connectivity to Retail Pro engineers for configurations.
 Training provided to approximately 200 functional/operational users within 7 days.
 Alternate ISP for Retail Pro Servers to make sure connectivity is available 24/7.
 Electricity down age in Data Center; under, over voltage Regulator installation with auto
start generator.
Pilot Project Deployment Strategy
(August 2012 – November 2012)
As a principal course of action for each brand, it was decided that 2 days should be spent at each
brand’s head office deployment, 3 days at its warehouse deployment and 1 day per pilot shop
deployment. Hands-on, end user training was to be conducted at the spot alongside the deployment
at each of these sites.

12. 5 shops from each brand were finalized for the pilot phase and the deployment took place. The new
systems were run in parallel to the legacy systems to compare performance on different metrics and
modules, like move list, promotions, centralized discounts, price controlling, etc.
The pilot phase took place for multiple purposes, primarily to monitor the flow of the retail
management cycle. Each and every step of the new RMS was looked into in great detail and verified
from where it would be originating and ending. The extent to which the business processes were
being catered to in the new systems was also realized.
The data communication process was also observed during this phase, and an individual application
for data transfer and communication, known as the Electronic Communication Manager (ECM) was
installed. The schedule of ECM was tested time and again until it was made sure that the
synchronization between the warehouse, head office and shops was accurate. It was important to
get the schedule working correctly, since otherwise, it would adversely affect the inventory status at
any shop.
Once the data integrity was ensured, focus was laid on the reporting requirements of the brands.
The authenticity and accuracy of the reports within Retail Pro was checked. Further requirements of
the brands were catered to and made available within the reports.
Another important point in the pilot phase was to take the sales data into the existing financial
system, and check its sanity. This was done through data transfer utility from the Retail System to
the financial system.
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Mega Roll-out
(December 2012 – January 2012)
After the success of the pilot testing phase, it was time for the company to go for a mega roll out.
Due to extremely stringent deadlines given be the directors, a 35 day detailed project deployment
plan was prepared to deploy the remaining 340 POS.A team comprising the MIS department, the
Sales operations (from each brand), the Physical Audit team and the RMS vendor who was at the
back-end operations were put together for this purpose. The plan was divided amongst the three
regions, which were, the Northern, Central and Southern and three different teams were sent to
each region to complete the task. The audit team would visit the shops at night time and perform

13. the stock count, and after their go ahead, the MIS team would visit the shop in the morning, deploy
the systems and decommission legacy system from that shop.
All went according to the plan, and the team was very successfully able to achieve the target of
replacing 340 POS in only 35 days.
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Richard Kolodynsky, Senior Vice President EMEA/APAC, Retail Pro International, LLC stated:
“For a project of such magnitude, this has been the fastest deployment that Retail Pro has ever
experienced.”
Conclusion
With this project, Sefam has achieved its goal of not only replacing the legacy systems, but also
benefitting through the use of corporate reports, planning, sell ing and traceability. Moreover the
brands have started benefitting with the central controls, like prices, discounts and promotions. This
was never done on such a fast pace before the deployment of our new RMS. The brands have
benefitted on another level of controls on user security and they have a better transparency on sales
and stock values, by which they can achieve an accurate profit and loss statement, thus enabling
better decision making.