Case Study

Footsteps of giants

This kids' apparel-maker was in expansion mode, when it realized that its current IT
systems would not be able to support its ambitious plans. What followed was a complete
overhaul and an implementation of new ERP systems with able assistance from Tectura
India. Nandini Chhatre reports

Lilliput Kidswear is a brand that enjoys strong recall in the minds of its
audience-children-which is one of the major reasons that have influenced the
company's growth initiatives. Lilliput Kidswear has come a long way from just
manufacturing and exporting women's and children's wear to starting its first
store in Delhi in 2002, to having a strong presence in both domestic and
international markets (Bahrain and China) in kidswear. Today, Lilliput
Naresh
Kidswear has eight manufacturing units in Delhi and NCR with 3,000 state-of-
Kunwar, Lilliput
the-art machines producing 6,00,000 units of clothing per month. As Lilliput
continues to work towards its mission of becoming an international brand in the kids apparel
segment, the IT team of the company, headed by Naresh Kunwar, discovered that their
systems were not geared to meet the challenges posed by high-speed expansion, which
could be a possible road block to the envisaged growth rate. Consequently, the company
was on the lookout for a solution which would allow them to manage their growing retail
business more professionally and seamlessly.

This is where the company found able support in the Gurgaon-based Tectura India, a
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, a leading Microsoft Dynamics™ partner and global services
company. "Tectura has a dedicated team which looks after the retail business. The team
constitutes professionals who have retail industry experience," states Deepak Saini, Tectura
India. Retail implementations typically require the service organization to deploy resources
in parallel and at multiple locations to give a cutting-edge and flexible solution. For Lilliput,
the solution architecture is very flexible, minimizing customization needs and allowing
incremental setups/rollouts.

The solution

"Lilliput had some very bad experiences with respect to the deployment and functionality
matrix of earlier solutions as they did not allow the company to go live or online with a
central ERP system," reveals Saini. "This resulted in insufficient information in the areas of
inventory management, stock movement and sales MIS with its earlier attempts at retail
solutions," he continues. According to Saini, the earlier solution was not flexible in terms of
user interface as well as in meeting end-user requirements. Thus, end-user confidence was
a major challenge. Also, the company was growing and this rapid growth brought with itself
another set of challenges.

For instance, the IT team within Lilliput had to achieve all the incremental go-lives keeping
pace with an increasing count of store openings, which was happening very rapidly. Running
and monitoring the system at already implemented locations also had to go on in parallel.
"Implementations of such scale warranted foresight in infrastructure planning, live server
processor count and speed, current and future RAM capacity, incoming bandwidth
availability, etc. from a hardware and planning perspective, and the existing systems and
infrastructure was not in a position to handle these challenges of expansion," states Saini.
Deepak Saini and his team decided to implement the Microsoft Dynamics' ERP Solution
based on the scalability of MS NAV LS retail architecture, its key feature list and ease of
use-factors that addressed the pain points of Lilliput Kidswear.

The Blueprint

Lilliput decided to do whatever it took to make its retail solution a success. The IT team,
under the leadership of Naresh Kunwar, started working with every department to
understand their requirements and difficulties, their pain points and critical issues. "It was a
good experience-working with each department. We gathered all related information from
each department to understand their requirements and also the infrastructure that will be
needed to run the ERP to fulfill them," states Kunwar.

Once the IT team had all the information, they then proceeded with development planning,
security systems, user information, user limitations, flow of information, and other such key
documents. When choosing the mode of implementation, the tech teams from both
organizations (Lilliput and Tectura) conceded on going-live with one location at a time. "We
started from the head office and warehouse first. This was followed by going live one
location at a time. It was a complicated task to install the server and ERP tools and other
systems in the most remote locations. After exhaustive testing on test servers, we were
ready to start it live," elucidates Kunwar. The most critical aspect of the entire project was
training Lilliput's executives to use the new system. In this regard, the remote user proved
to be a big challenge. The company arranged a number of sessions at the head office to
ensure that executives became adept at work related to generating and maintaining transfer
orders in and out, reports, financial management, warehousing, item master management,
barcode printing, back office sale invoices, tax relation, credit notes, GRN etc. The company
developed power point presentations and videos as well to help remote users understand
the intricacies of billing, day-to-day reporting, inventory and tender management, Transfer
order In and Out, etc. under the new ERP system.

Benefits galore

Lilliput Kidswear has benefited from the implementation in more ways than one. For
starters, this implementation has facilitated fast exchange of data. The LS Data Director
exchanges data quickly between different Microsoft Dynamics NAV databases and other
databases that are not based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV. This solution also has a built-in
scheduling mechanism to run batch jobs. This mechanism is also used to schedule transfers
of data between the head office and stores, or from stores to POS terminals.

The solution effectively addresses the in-store operational requirements of Lilliput. Billing
was an issue at the store level. Additionally, there was a requirement to have complete
localization of the application in accordance with statutory requirements. Also, the store
operations needed a user-friendly and easy to understand solution. LS POS is the Point of
Sale/Service (POS) module, part of LS Retail. LS POS is a fast, dependable and powerful
POS application, with a graphic user interface. It provided Lilliput with the much needed
advanced features required by its stores to effectively run promotions, loyalty schemes and
periodic discounts.

The solution has also helped Lilliput to effectively streamline inventory control. Lilliput
managed multiple warehouses for company-owned stores, MBO customers and a vast
product portfolio. Due to the huge number of stores being added to the existing chain, there
was a definite need for an advanced inventory management system; one that would be
capable enough to use advance devices such as barcode scanners and other EDI devices. An
effective Inventory Management tool that provided a simple method of collecting data for
stock control, was another critical need of the hour.

The current solution matches these requirements quite well, as the processes were designed
to make the task at hand as simple as possible for the user. By creating a consistent look
and feel for the user in all worksheet processes, the system also ensures process completion
as per the process configuration. This produces more reliable data in the system as the user
is always led through the process. "LS Retail has changed the way Lilliput stores operate.
The LS Retail functionalities allow Lilliput to manage time inventory flow and maintain a
healthy turnover rate. The efficiency of the warehouses has increased by 60 percent,"
explains Naresh Kunwar.

Today, Lilliput is operates 145 stores in offline mode using Sales, Purchase & Inventory
module. The stores and the head office transact data in an offline mode on a daily basis.
"The initial store licenses were 75. Another 75 were procured as the solution became
successful. A hundred more licenses are under discussion in the immediate future and given
the way the company is growing, 200 more licenses are again a probability in the future,"
states an exuberant Saini. And going by the way this company is expanding, we can be sure
of them taking their initiatives in ERP to new heights.