Study Vishal Mega Mart Marketing Essay
Vishal mega mart diwali (the Hindu festival of Lights) is celebrated all across India. Family members and friends exchange gifts with good wishes for the coming year. India is filled with shoppers seeking great discounts and high-quality products. Some families keep their major household purchases until Diwali. Diwali is by far India’s busiest holiday and will provide retailers with strong revenues and the chance to increase their customer base. Vishal Mega Mart India’s largest fashion-led supermarket was faced with this exact mix of challenge and opportunity.
Gagan Sharma – Senior Manager at Vishal Metro Mart explains: “We’re a rapidly expanding company. We operate a fashion website, with a variety brands in house, as well as over 190 brick-and–mortar stores all across India. Every year we launch approximately 25 new shops. We have been able significantly expand our customer reach in a time of rising prosperity. However, during Diwali we faced increased customer demand.
Retail is both online- and in-store. This generates a large amount of data. Sales reports (supply chain inventories), financial information, and sales reports are just a few. However, over a 4-year period, our data size grew from 3.3TB – to 9.5TB. We found that our IT systems were not functioning at optimal levels as we expanded our operations. All of our supply chain data was slowing down, which caused delays in delivery during festival season. This caused our stores to run out of stock faster than we anticipated. It also negatively affected customer experience and reduced sales potential.
Transformation story
Supercharging supply-chain management
Gagan Sharma said, “Our existing systems simply couldn’t handle the volume data that we were generating at a time when our business was growing.” We decided to explore more options and hardware that was more efficient. After looking at many hardware options, we decided to go with IBM Power Systems.
Vishal Mega mart’s IT staff worked together with IBM[r] Systems Lab Services, in order to migrate the existing SAP (r] ERP solutions to the IBM Power Systems and IBM Strorwize[r] V7000 storage systems. To support SAP HANA’s database, the company deployed three IBM Power(r), System E870 Servers and three IBM Power System S822 Servers. Additionally, one IBM Power System S822L and one IBM Power System S822L were used to support other databases and the application layers. Vishal Mega mart used IBM PowerVM virtualization technology to set up a dedicated (LPAR) logical partition for SAP HANA and a pool for shared resources for other applications.
Vishal Mega Market relies on IBM Power Systems server to ensure that its core ERP system is always up and running, regardless of peak demand. Now uses IBM Power Systems server to support its core SAP Business Suite that is powered by SAP HANA. It also has SAP Business Warehouse powered via SAP HANA. SAP Enterprise Portal. SAP Process Integration.
“We chose IBM for two reasons. Gagan Sharma says, “First, because IBM is a respected global company, we knew we could rely upon them to leave no stone unturned throughout the implementation process. And, second, because we required a system which would seamlessly integrate with our SAP ERP apps. Additionally the Storwize V7000 gives us the ability manage our large and growing data stores with ease.
After the IBM hardware was deployed, the team decided that they would migrate to SAP ERP with SAP HANAr. The new application runs SAP HANA for IBM Power Systems Architecture along with the SAP Enterprise Server Linux Enterprise Server For SAP Applications.
“Selecting SAP HANA to run Vishal Mega Mart’s supply chain was a straightforward decision,” says Manuhaar Agrawalla who was at that time the Vishal Super Mart’s General Manager and Project Leader. “Having used SAP ERP for financial reporting and supply chain management over many years, we know that SAP is a top-quality company. SAP HANA’s columnar memory database allowed us to use the SAP HANA columnar in-memory to accelerate our reporting, supply management, and billing processes.
“We were confident that by improving our technical abilities, we would quickly transform our business and be more ready for the future. We had hoped that SAP ERP with SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems would increase our performance and allow us more time to attract new customers.
“It was clear during the implementation that we had made a good choice. The representatives at IBM Systems Lab Services were outstanding. They showed a level and depth of knowledge that we had never expected. The migration was also made easy by IBM’s vast knowledge of how SAP software and IBM systems interconnect. In fact, we were able to migrate the majority of our SAP ERP Modules from our previous SAP HANA database to this SAP HANA Version in less than 48 hours.
Story of the Results
Illuminating digital transformation’s path
Vishal Mega Market is now fully equipped to handle spikes of demand, thanks to SAP HANA version for IBM Power Systems. The company is now ready for Diwali. They are also better equipped to expand their operations and transform customer experience.
Gagan Sharma comments that “the most immediate improvement in performance is a significant enhancement in processing capability. One example is the 50 percent performance increase that we saw when we switched to IBM Power Systems. After that, we were able to see a 60 percent performance improvement by implementing SAP HANA. The result is that transactions and batch processes are faster and can handle more standard and peak volumes than before.
In business terms we can finish orders earlier if we do our sales analysis. We then know what stock replenishment suppliers will need. This in turn allows us to ensure that our shelves are stocked well. Customers love coming to our stores, especially during peak Diwali rushes, because they know they can always score a great deal.
“Our financial report is faster which also enhances our agility, giving us the information that we need to make more informed purchasing decisions. Our financial reporting runs on this version SAP HANA. This allows us to convert transactional data in actionable insights. We can see precisely when to buy the groceries, cookware, or clothes that are most in demand during Diwali.
Also able to make efficiency savings. We have cut power consumption and reduced the size our data center by 68%. We have reduced our OPEX by a significant amount and can now hire more staff during festivals. These operational savings will be reinvested in improving the quality and expanding our online presence.
Gagan Sharma concludes by saying that working with IBM to deploy SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems allowed us to spend more time and money to expand our reach in India, and to achieve our core mission of producing high quality goods at affordable rates. Implementing SAP HANA (IBM Power Systems) has opened up the possibility of future growth at Vishal mega Mart.
“Looking forward, we plan to open more bricks-and-mortar locations and create a smartphone application for our customers in order to boost online trade. While we currently focus on improving the design and appearance of our physical stores in order to increase sales, our goal is to soon make mobile ecommerce more accessible for our customers. Our powerful IBM hardware and SAP HANA make it easy to step into the future.
Vishal Mega Mart
Vishal Mega Mart India’s largest fashion-led supermarket chain is home to more than 192 stores. They also have a combined trading area greater than 3,000,000 square feet and are located in 110 cities and towns across India. The company offers fashion, grocery, and personal care products to Indian customers.