Cape Union Mart Group is based in Cape
Town and currently houses 5 major local brands - Cape Union Mart, South
Africa’s favourite outdoor store and the group’s flagship brand; K-Way, an
extremely popular technical range of outdoor clothing and gear; Old Khaki, a
casual fashion brand available in over a dozen stand-alone stores; Sparks and
Ellis, a uniform company and the latest addition Poetry, an eclectic lifestyle
concept store for women. Stocking everything one needs for outdoor pursuits
since 1933, Cape Union Mart has over 100 stores across South Africa, Namibia
and Botswana.
In 2011 Cape Union Mart embarked on a
massive project, revamping their entire financial and POS systems.
“One of the key elements we needed to
review was our budgeting and reporting systems. We had been carrying out our
budgeting in Excel which became a time-consuming and labour-intensive exercise
that was often complicated further by mistakes caused by human error or poor
version control,” says Evan Torrance, IT Director of Cape Union Mart.
“We wanted a solution that streamlined
the process, increasing efficiency and reducing errors by maintaining a single
real-time version of the truth,” says Torrance. “We considered a number of
options and very quickly decided that idu-Concept was the ideal business tool
for us and that there was a culture fit between idu Software and Cape Union
Mart. Cost is also always an important consideration for us, as well as local
representation for support, both of which were met by idu.”
Cape Union Mart considers idu
Software’s flexibility as a key differentiator of the company. There was a
degree of complexity involved in the roll-out and on-going support required
because of an ERP roll-out that was taking place at a similar point in time.
“The idu team was always pleasant, professional and accommodating, and
approached any and all additional support with a can-do attitude,” says
Torrance.
“idu-Concept made it possible to do our
budget against the new system’s chart of accounts with actuals from the old
system’s set of accounts, making the move from one ERP system to another
manageable,” says Torrance. “In this respect idu’s role in the migration of ERP
systems should not be underestimated; in fact despite initial reluctance to
undertake this project whilst tackling an ERP implementation, this decision
proved with hindsight to be truly inspired.”
Cape Union Mart began using three
idu-Concept modules – Budgeting, Reporting & Analytics – in late 2011. They
were instantly impressed by the accuracy, real-time transparency and the
control it provided. Users of the systems include everyone from the Financial
Director, financial managers, department heads, area managers and selected
departmental users and the feedback has been consistently that they are easy to
use and make the work faster and simpler to do.
The idu Concept Financial Budgeting
Module made the process of loading budgets on an annual basis far smoother and
more efficient. Previously there were issues with multiple versions of the
budget across different departments and they were often poorly consolidated or
late for the new financial year. The simplicity and accuracy of a real time
system has eliminated all of these concerns.
“It’s a great budgeting tool that
requires limited input,” says Torrance. “It completely changed the budgeting
process for us and supports our approach to budgeting. An additional and
unexpected benefit of the module was that the percentage reallocations have
made intercompany and intergroup changes automatic.”
The idu-Concept Financial Reporting
Module makes the process of reviewing monthly actuals against budgets for
department heads a lot easier and provides the ability to review them in a
timely and accurate manner. “It is a self-explanatory system, making it easy to
run reports,” adds Torrance, “It also allows us to drill down to the lowest
transactional level and it works well with excel.”
The idu-Concept Analytics module has
streamlined the monthly reporting process and makes analysing data faster,
easier and more accurate. The fact that is reads data from the idu modules and
the ERP systems makes reporting of varied and complex data easy.
“idu-Concept is an affordable,
functionally-robust solution that offers visibility across our entire
business,” says Torrance. “We would recommend idu for all its exceptional
qualities, as well as their team of professional and passionate staff who
fitted very naturally into our working environment for the duration of the
project.”
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