Clarks

To convert fleeting fashion trends into sales, Clarks wanted to activate new channels and digital services rapidly—but found that existing systems could not support the volume and pace of change.

To lay the foundation for omni-channel retail, Clarks moved its mission-critical SAP business systems to the SAP HANA data platform, hosted in a private cloud based on IBM Power Systems.

In fashion retail, time-to-market is more important than ever. Consumer trends can take off and fizzle out in a matter of weeks, and companies like Clarks—one of the UK’s leading footwear brands—must act quickly to capitalize on the opportunities.

John Caswell, Systems Manager at Clarks, explains, “Today’s customers expect the ability to purchase anytime, anywhere and on any connected device. To deliver on those expectations, it’s vital that we offer a seamless and responsive experience on every channel: whether it’s a retail store, website, social media platform or mobile app.”

Every customer is different, and to cater to each of them Clarks manages more than one million stock-keeping units (SKUs) for the styles, sizes and widths of its footwear products. To ensure the optimal assortments of products are available for sale on every channel, the company relies on SAP solutions to manage its production, planning and distribution processes.

“As our business needs have changed over the years, our SAP solutions have evolved with them,” John Caswell continues. “For example, we moved from batch to real-time processing to offer instant stock-checking and next-day delivery. And to enable more efficient management of our global supply chain, we recently consolidated multiple international SAP deployments to a single global SAP instance for the entire business.”

To compete effectively in an omni-channel retail environment, Clarks is under increasing pressure to activate new channels and digital services rapidly—but its existing SAP infrastructure was approaching capacity.

“If one of our products explodes in popularity on social media, we need to make sure we can process a significant spike in orders in a short window of time,” comments John Caswell. “Similarly, winning a new international distribution deal might hinge on our ability to build the necessary B2B integrations in just a matter of weeks. We knew that we were at the very limits of what our current infrastructure could deliver. To ensure that we could continue to serve the business effectively, we looked for a new platform.”

With SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA running on IBM Power Systems servers, Clarks has gained the agility to launch new digital channels and services rapidly, helping it to connect with more consumers around the world.

Mindaugas Liegus, IT Service Specialist – SAP BASIS at Clarks, explains, “By moving to a new generation of high-performance IBM Power Systems servers and IBM FlashSystem storage, we’ve boosted our available compute resources by 50 percent without any increase in costs.” 

He continues, “This extra headroom is absolutely essential to build, test and deploy new services into production. Better still, our private cloud environment enables us to provision the necessary compute, storage and networking resources within minutes. These efficiencies mean we can now deliver services such as B2B integrations with new distributors in as little as one working day, up to 90 percent faster than before. Being able to deliver within these aggressive timeframes can be the difference between winning a major order and losing out on a sales opportunity, and we’re extremely pleased with the agility we’ve gained.”

Delivering innovative services, faster

Clarks is already harnessing its increased agility to accelerate the delivery of key innovation projects. “For the last two years, we have been supporting the business with the rollout of an automated merchandise financial planning solution, which promises to deliver a significant improvement in our operational efficiency,” explains John Caswell.

“In the final stages of the project, the business needed a variety of different test environments, some with live production data and some with static data. In the past, provisioning these environments to their specifications would have been a major project requiring weeks of work, but thanks to the new private cloud platform we got the environments up and running in less than a day. Today, we know we have the platform, the software and the people to respond rapidly to requests for innovation projects—boosting the value we deliver to the business.”

Striding ahead of the competition

Thanks to its IBM Power Systems servers, Clarks has boosted end-user SAP application performance by a factor of two, supporting faster, better-informed decision-making. And with access to elastic, burst-out capacity, the company has flexibility to move non-production workloads into the public cloud as its needs evolve.

“Clarks is going through a business transformation that aims to open up access to new markets and new customers,” comments Zoe Jones. “With our SAP solutions running on a responsive, high-performance private cloud platform, we are in a strong position to build value-added services, integrate our data with new applications, and ultimately bring our products to market faster.” 

John Caswell concludes, “To thrive in an omni-channel marketplace, it is vital for us to understand our customers’ preferences and offer them a seamless retail journey. A flexible, cost-effective and high-performance IT infrastructure is the starting point for delivering on all these requirements. By deploying SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA in a high-performance private cloud, we are strengthening our ability to compete in the global retail market.”

Founded in 1825, Clarks (link resides outside of ibm.com) is one of the UK’s leading footwear brands. With more than 1,400 retail stores across North America, Western and Eastern Europe, India and China, Clarks employs 13,000 people and generates annual revenues equivalent to approximately USD1.9 billion.