Melbourne integrator's adventurous CRM overhaul

Microsoft partner Sable Systems has signed a multimillion-dollar deal to overhaul outdoor retailer Kathmandu's IT infrastructure.

Sable will consolidate five systems into Microsoft Dynamic AX for both Kathmandu's back-end operations and its point-of-sale system.

Kathmandua chief information officer Grant Taylor told CRN's sister title, iTnews: "We’re moving from a best-of-breed strategy where it was very difficult to get timely, accurate information in an environment where data is always flying around.

"My strategy now is to stick everything in one system."

Martin Wildsmith, Sable Systems' director of sales and marketing, said the upgrade would streamline operations for all 140 of Kathmandu's global stores.

"The whole reason why they are doing this is because they want to have a platform that will help them scale and grow," Wildsmith said.

"They're going from five core systems to one platform. We were selected by Kathmandu because we're specialists in retail. We've written our own software to meet the needs of the industry."

The upgrades started in January and will be implemented in several phases over two years.

The first step involved migrating Kathmandu from a legacy CRM database to a Dynamics instance hosted in Dimension Data's Sydney data centre.

The company has also moved to a Dynamics integrated solution from Microsoft partner JustEnough for forecasting and planning.

The next step will be to replace a seven-year-old Pronto software installation at the point of sale (POS) with Dynamics AX for Retail.

Wildsmith said upgrading the PoS system was the most difficult part as any discrepancies could jeopardise positive customer experiences. "Our main focus is getting the PoS live. There are five people working on the project. For each phase there's quite extensive testing."

The PoS upgrade will take place in December and is expected to be completed across Kathmandu locations in Australia, the UK and New Zealand by February 2014.

Next year Sable will migrate Kathmandu's finance and supply systems from Infor M3 to Dynamics.

"Everything has to work together as one."