Mosaic group gives acquired IT systems a uniform style

Shared services model will replace Rubicon's supply chain technology

Women's fahsion chain Warehouse will use the new system from July

Retail and clothing group Mosaic Fashions is consolidating its IT to streamline systems acquired through takeovers.

Mosaic, which owns brands such as Karen Millen and Oasis, acquired Rubicon Retail and its three businesses in late 2006, fuelling a series of changes in the IT infrastructure.

The group is replacing all of Rubicon’s supply chain systems with a single platform based on a shared services model covering warehouse and merchandise planning and business intelligence (BI). Former Rubicon unit Shoe Studio began using the system in November 2007 and the other two group companies, Principles and Warehouse, will go live on the same central system next month.

“There are clear possibilities for increasing cost efficiency, for instance in jointly using various types of support services such as accounting and IT, as well as the distribution system and production processes,” said an investor corporate action report on Mosaic.

Most of the group’s applications are packaged systems and the business uses limited in-house development, mainly for some BI applications running on Business Objects and Visual Basic.

Ahead of the integration work with Rubicon, Mosaic has built an additional datacentre in Oxfordshire.

The group has rolled out storage area networking across the new site, changed its network provider and plans to use virtualisation technology, Mosaic’s chief information officer John Bovill told Computing.

“We are looking at getting PC virtualisation for the server side, but there is a bit of trepidation at the moment, as we are at very early stages,” he said.

“The main goal is not necessarily to downsize, but to limit the purchase of new servers as we implement new applications and the businesses grows. This is purely because of the infrastructure that we have in place; it would be difficult to remove some of those servers,” he said.

Bovill said the move is more about capacity planning for the future rather than reducing the number of servers the group uses at present.

“If you become too lean, you may be unable to offer a good customer service,” he said.

“At the moment outsourcing in that area does not work for us and we believe the way to provide a cost-effective structure and good service is to follow the in-house model.”