Accenture manages all application development and maintenance for Edcon, South Africa’s dominant fashion retailer. They use CAST to facilitate the rapid adaptation of the company’s highly customized Retek (Oracle Retail) implementation and other software packages.

1. “65% of the time of the 20-
person technical staff on
Retek is devoted to applica-
tion analysis prior to making
changes. Of that, CAST has
saved over 60%”

2. CAST Forum on Application Intelligence
Accenture at Edgar Consolidated Stores Ltd
“65% of the time of the Context The Solution
The Edgars Consolidated Stores Ltd (Edcon) Many enhancements had to be made to the
20-person technical staff on is Southern Africa’s dominant fashion retailer original system for it to meet the group’s
selling a broad range of clothing, footwear, complex requirements: The system was
Retek is devoted to applica- textiles and accessories through approxi- extended and more modules were added
mately 600 outlets. Additionally, Edcon Fi- over time (for Demand Forecasting and Price
tion analysis prior to making nancial Services provides credit facilities and Management for instance). Integration with
financial services products to the Group’s 3.5 Edcon’s custom-built data warehouse, store
changes. Of that, CAST has million active account customers. They have
over 20,000 employees.
back-office and Point-Of-Sale system were
also included in the scope of the project,
saved over 60%” In 1998, Edcon turned to Accenture to sup- making it that much more difficult to change
and understand the system in its entirety.
port its large network of stores and brands.
Sincethen, an Accenture team of 250 people Since 2003, Accenture has been using the
at its peak has managed all application sys- CAST Application Intelligence Platform on
tem development and maintenance activity Retek to facilitate rapid adaptation to Edcon’s
as part of a 7-year IT application outsourcing specific needs. Today, as much as 30% of
contract. the Retek baseline application has been
modified and Accenture is fully responsible
The Problem for maintaining the Retek system on their
own – without the help of Oracle’s Retail
With a strong focus on CRM (Customer
organization who provides upgrades and
Relationship Management) and SCM (Supply
support for Retek - while seamlessly incorpo-
Chain Management), the group invested in
rating the most recent modules from Retek
a new suite of supply chain systems based
when they need to.
mainly on Retek (Oracle Retail) and other
software packages. Their ultimate goal was Indeed CAST’s unique capabilities get to
to create an efficient and consistent group- the heart of what efficient customization,
wide merchandise management and supply integration and upgrade of complex applica-
chain solution which could help them: tion software is all about. CAST continues to
provide Accenture with:
• Improve operating efficiencies
• Increase stock turns and in-stock position • omplete technical documentation of the
C
• inimize the long-term costs of building
M Retek baseline application structure, which
and running the solution Oracle Retail does not deliver
• Ultimately reduce markdowns • omplete visibility of inter-dependencies
C
Questions? Email us at contact@castsoftware.com 1

3. “On the adaptation of between baseline and custom code exten-
sions and other applications in the portfolio,
Retail Retek application to Edcon’s needs:
According to Dipak Patel – Technical Man-
allowing rapid acquisition and sharing of ager Development on the project – “65% of
the Retek Warehouse in-depth knowledge about applications by the time of the 20-person technical staff on
Accenture’s pool of rotating staff Retek is devoted to application analysis prior
Mangement System, • xtensive change impact analysis capabili-
E to making changes. Of that, CAST has saved
ties, allowing precise scoping of impact over 60%”.
technical work— mitigation work by project management Further more testing time is significantly
and huge time savings in change analysis reduced as a result of precise identification of
initially planned to and implementation as well as testing work. impacts. “All in all, impressive gains resulted
This has been used for functional changes from using CAST. On the adaptation of the
last 18 months—was as well as implementation of patches to the Retek Warehouse Management System,
base line application technical work - initially planned to last 18
actually delivered in • utomated detection of changes between
A months - was actually delivered in 6 months,
versions, allowing improved management of thanks to all of the savings in application
6 months.” patches and upgrades analysis, development and integration testing
work”.
Out of the current Accenture team totaling
150, 20 people are involved in technical work
Conclusion
on Retek and are using CAST.
Building on this success, Accenture is now
The Results planning to implement the CAST Application
Development Governance Dashboard, thus
While evaluating CAST, Accenture figured
enabling IT Management to:
out that it could help improve both respon-
siveness to business demands and quality • onitor and control the quantity and quality
M
delivered, yielding benefits both for them- of work delivered by development teams
selves and their customer. Indeed both par- • heck the compliance of coding and archi-
C
ties experienced great value in using CAST to tecture rules agreed upon with Edcon
provide enhanced visibility and transparency • rill-down capability - not just monitoring,
D
to the work been delivered. According to Ac- but the ability for project leaders to actively
centure, an Edcon executive at a Retek User drill down and share technical informa-
Conference commented that the success of tion with the development team, ensuring
their IT system had significantly contributed speedy delivery and remediation
to the company’s performance driving the
Furthermore, Accenture plans to extend the
stock price from 17 to 300 Rands.
use of CAST to the entire Information System,
CAST Application Intelligence Platform has covering Oracle Financial, as well as Micro-
greatly facilitated the adaptation of the Oracle soft-based Business Intelligence applications.
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