Indian retail operations company Trent Limited has migrated to SAP S/4HANA with SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (SAP HEC) to boost the efficiency of its IT systems and set the company towards accelerating digital transformation. The project was led by Tata Consultancy Services leveraging SAP Integrated Delivery Framework.
Trent Limited, a fast-growing player in India’s retail industry, owns and runs enormous retail brands, including Westside, Star Bazaar, and Landmark, among others. The company has reported that its revenue from operations for the quarter ending December 31, 2021, was Rs 1,499.08 crore — a significant increase over the previous year’s figure of Rs 853.63 crore during the same period. Trent Limited is on track to have over 425 fashion stores by March 2022, according to the company’s projections. Meanwhile, its Star Bazaar food business, which has tight footprint outlets and competitive pricing, is gradually becoming a model that is gaining customer momentum.
To keep up with the rapid expansion and to reinforce its commitment to generating business value through innovative collaborations, Trent Limited recognised the power of cloud-based IT solutions to modernise its operations. The company’s systems previously had issues in maintaining a huge number of concurrent users and a high volume of stock movements since they were functioning on an ageing IT infrastructure.
With this, Trent Limited selected Tata Consultancy Services to be its growth and transformation partner. For more than two decades, the IT services, consulting, and business solutions provider has worked with SAP to assist customers in transforming into future-ready, intelligent enterprises through the use of a comprehensive range of solutions and SAP specialists.
Trent Limited Head of IT Vinod Kapote said that the SAP S/4HANA implementation project was done using SAP Integrated Delivery Framework to mitigate delivery risks and optimise resources — resulting in a 60{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} reduction in the business downtime window. Kapote further explained:
“Migrating to SAP S/4HANA with SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud maximized the reliability of our IT systems and puts us on a path toward advancing our digital transformation. Our growth and transformation partner TCS, along with SAP Integrated Delivery Framework and SAP ActiveAttention services, helped successfully deliver this transformation program on time and on budget.”
Partnering with Tata Consultancy Services to Move to S/4HANA with SAP HEC
Commenting on the project, Sanjay Das, SAP Delivery Head of IS Retail at Tata Consultancy Services Limited, noted that the firm delivered the program on budget and as scheduled by making use of the effective partnership with SAP using SAP Integrated Delivery Framework. The solution intends to meet customer requirements by integrating both SAP’s and the partner’s solutions and services. It fosters trust to help guarantee that the relationship between SAP Services and Support and the respective partner stays on track.
Moreover, SAP Integrated Delivery Framework aims to draw on the expertise of SAP and the delivery partner at crucial stages during the project, from the initial engagement through go-live, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for each party involved. In 2021, the German tech giant expanded the framework to include support for any SAP implementation environment, including the Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS) offering RISE with SAP, cloud, on-premise, or line-of-business solutions.
Following implementation, Trent Limited was able to achieve the following business value-driven outcomes:
- Reduced the downtime period by 60{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} by adopting SAP’s future-ready business applications.
- Enhanced performance in business systems and customised SAP Fiori apps for retail operations.
- Increased the number of concurrent users while at the same time, minimising the processing time for dispatch.
Other key features of the collaboration project include expert advisory using SAP ActiveAttention, deployment of S/4HANA and Fiori apps, as well as significantly lowering the conversion time of legacy systems to SAP HEC.
“This project is now a model for us and will help us promote this framework to customers in India and the global market,” Das revealed.
