Fillip to the business growth

Since its entry into India, Microsoft has focused on three things: becoming a key IT partner to the Indian government and the industry, supporting and fuelling the growth of the local IT industry through its partner enablement programmes, and under Microsoft Unlimited Potential, enhancing education, jobs and opportunities and fostering innovation through relevant, affordable access to computing. Currently, Microsoft has offices in 16 cities including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai and Coimbatore. To cater to the retail industry, Microsoft has in its basket the solutions for Digital Marketing, Customer Centricity, Store Systems and Retail ERP & Supply Chain Management.

CASE STUDY

Optical stores of Gangar Opticians are branded as Gangar Eyenation with a chain of retail outlets and largest collection of brands and labels from the world over in frames, sunglasses and consumables. With rapid growth, the company identified the need for a flexible business solution to integrate all its stores as well as processes with emphasis on improved customer services. Working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Godrej Infotech, it deployed Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4.0 which was later upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. 

Situation

Gangar Opticians had gone corporate around three years back and hence considers itself a startup company. With no legacy software at its hands, the company was managing all operations including billing, inventory, sales, purchase, and delivery across all stores manually. With 24 operational stores and a vision of 50 stores in near future, managing operations manually on a day to day basis was challenging. Not only was this inefficient but also a time consuming activity.

The company identified the need for a stable, integrated business solution with skilled professionals to manage the same.

To support effective and precise operations, the management sought a single solution with modules for sale, purchase, finance, and inventory so that all retail operations could be executed in the same place and be more efficient and lucrative. 

To overcome the existing issues, the company decided to deploy an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that would help to boost up the sales and beat competition to win over the customer base. 

Solution

To have an edge over its competitors, Gangar Opticians decided to deploy the best business solution available in the market. After a thorough market survey, the company decided on Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4.0.

“Retail being a customer-centric industry, we were looking for a solution that would help us to serve customers in a better but cost effective manner,” explains Abhinay Arekar, General Manager - IT, Gangar Opticians Pvt Ltd.

Implementation started in August, 2007 and was completed by March, 2008. The company later migrated to Dynamics NAV 2009 with SP1. The solution was deployed for 42 users across the corporate office in Mumbai, the warehouse, assembly unit and 24 functional stores. All the base modules including LS Retail, Finance, Sales and Marketing, Purchase, and Warehouse were deployed.

Benefits

The new business solution coordinates all retail process to provide maximum return on investment. It allows smooth functioning of stores with no room for errors. Overall, the company receives the benefits of working with a richly featured business management solution that can meet present and future requirements.  The following positive changes were witnessed:

• Improved customer satisfaction, increased sales
• Simplified stock management
• Improved workforce management
• Efficient financial management.

 With these enhanced capabilities available due to Microsoft Dynamics NAV, we are able to maintain overall customer satisfaction, profitability, and delivery objectives. Because of better inventory management it is easier for us to open many more outlets within a short span of time.

Jigar Gangar, Director, Gangar Opticians Pvt Ltd

With so many digitally empowered consumers, retailers are being challenged to operate faster and smarter across their organisations to achieve deeper customer loyalty and maintain a competitive edge. To address these challenges, retailers need to adopt what we call a ‘Connected Experience for Retail’ which Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail essentially will enable.

Kirill Tatarinov, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Business Solutions