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Customer Snapshot
Company: Colorado Group
Business/Industry: Retail
Company Headquarters: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Webpage: http://www.coloradogroup.com.au
UC4 Customer: since 2003
Technical Environment: Oracle Retail
The Company
The Colorado Group (CGL) is a major retailer and wholesaler of footwear and apparel in Australia, with headquarters in Brisbane, Queensland, and stores spread across Australia and New Zealand. It is one of Australia's oldest footwear businesses, with a heritage dating back more than 135 years. Colorado Group is a member of the Australian Stock Exchange 200 Index.
The Challenge
Over a 20-year period, CGL built an in-house Retail Merchandising system on the AS/400 platform. The AS/400 Robot tool underpinned its batch scheduling requirements. But new acquisitions and inability for the legacy systems to be tailored for growth made it increasingly difficult to continue with the in-house system. In mid 2003, the decision was made to switch to a commercial Retail Merchandising system. CGL then selected Oracle Retail running on a UNIX distributed system using Enterprise Sun servers. When the implementation team first met, they immediately identified batch scheduling and operations as key issues. These would have to be addressed if the new system was going to run smoothly.
The Solution
The system integrator for the Oracle Retail implementation, Online Resources (OLR), recommended the UC4 platform. The UC4 platform is an application automation tool that has an integrated, pre-configured Oracle Retail solution. The UC4 solution includes automation and scheduling templates that run Oracle Retail's basic data processing flows. These templates dramatically reduce the implementation period from months to weeks. The UC4 platform is fully certified by Oracle Retail.
Having heard many stories of implementation projects extending far beyond original schedules, one of Colorado's goals was to have ample time to test the batch processes before going live. With the UC4 platform in place from the beginning of the project, Online Resources was able to customize the UC4 Oracle Retail templates in a few weeks, and devote the remaining time to time to batch sequencing, timing, testing, and dependency tuning. The extensive scheduling features in the UC4 platform made it possible for OLR to minimize operator involvement in the batch processes. And by interfacing the UC4 platform to Colorado's Support Notification System, failures in the batch processing or jobs to complete on time are automatically brought to the Support Centre's attention without constant monitoring and intervention by operators. Bottom line: Colorado was able to go live with the new system within six months.
Matt Keays, IT Project Manager, had this to say about the UC4 platform: "Trusting our Oracle Retail system integration partners' recommendation, CGL implemented the UC4 platform with minimal issues. Batch operations for the implementation have met all service levels and allowed key technical resources to be invested in other functional areas of the system to help leverage the overall goals of the Oracle Retail Project."
"Trusting our Oracle Retail system integration partners' recommendation, CGL implemented UC4 with minimal issues. Batch operations for the implementation have met all service levels and allowed key technical resources to be invested in other functional areas of the system to help leverage the overall goals of the Oracle Retail Project."
Matt Keays, IT Project Manager
Colorado Group, Australia
