Matalan IT refresh delivers surprising benefits

Discount clothing and homewares retailer Matalan is experiencing unexpected productivity improvements following an overhaul of its merchandise management system.

The company was forced to replace an aging hardware platform that was nearing its end-of-life and an Oracle database that was no longer being supported.

Vendor Torex Retail has provided software and services to Matalan involving a nine month testing process. The company's Oracle 8 database has been upgraded to Oracle 10G.

Matalan is benefiting from faster, more reliable sales information that allows for greater analysis and quicker reporting.

‘The merchandise management application is the heart of the business and controls everything from product information to pricing, purchasing orders, stock holding, allocation and sales,’ said Matalan business systems manager Kirsten Kelly.

‘We wanted to upgrade rather than replace the system because it holds millions of pieces of data and the prospect of migrating that to a new system was daunting.

The upgrade has also given Matalan the opportunity to clear out old data.

‘The performance improvements were excellent and information that is processed overnight is now ready two and a half hours quicker than before,' said Kelly.

‘Other information extraction, such as sales statistics and stock merchandise, could take up to 30 hours, but now take just five. So important information can be ready Monday morning when our staff comes into work.’

Matalan waited until after the peak Christmas period to replace the application is it did not want to remove the heart of the business at its busiest time. Kelly says the implementation had gone smoothly and was a significant success.

What do you think? Email us at feedback@computing.co.uk

Further Reading

Matalan boosts promotions after Linux upgrade

Matalan expands Capgemini contract in PC refresh

Matalan puts in place new till system