TALLY WEiJL is a clothing company founded more than 20 years ago by two friends. The company opened its first store in 1987 in France. The company's headquarters is located in Basel whereas the design center is located in Paris. Distribution centers, from where the latest collections are sent to over five hundred stores in 30 countries, are located in Switzerland and Germany. In Poland the retail sales network consists of stores located in 25 cities. The corporation provides employment for more than 1200 people around the world. Until recently, managing of the company was supported by SAP R/3 solution also known as SAP ERP.

Origin: The big isn't always the best

According to guidelines regarding IT solutions internationally adopted in all TALLY WEiJL branches, dozen employees in the Polish branch of the company worked with SAP R/3. The system was adjusted for corporate reporting. However, because the system had been implemented by a Swiss company, it was imperfect in the area of Polish accounting standards. As a result, the vital tool of trade for the five-man accounting department turned out to be Microsoft S Excel spreadsheets, in which VAT records were stored and exchange rate differences calculated. Auxiliary IT systems were employed in  warehouse management and retail sale areas. The data from these two systems was copied by hand and transferred to the general ledger of SAP R/3 system whereas data recording for the tax purposes was supported by Microsoft Office Excel.

International companies resign from homogeneous ERP systems’ installations

For corporations having its seats, distribution centers and sales outlets in many countries, establishing standards of reporting and handling business processes is of paramount importance. At first glance, implementing one ERP system in all branches seems to be the perfect solution. In reality, working with one system only causes many difficulties and multilingualism is the least important problem of them all. Each country has its own accounting standards, human resources and payroll regulations and, first and foremost, different business needs. The largest companies have found an optimal solution which does not only allow to maintain conformity with the law, but also optimizes the cost of starting a new branch and running the smaller ones. A diversified line of SAP products comes in handy. SAP offers the SAP Business One software for small and medium enterprises, SAP Business All-in-One for large companies and SAP ERP (also known as SAP R/3) for corporations. The capabilities of the integrated offering were utilized by such well-known international corporations as  Intel, KSB, L’Oreal, Citrix, Whirlpool, Alcatel and Kohler. These companies installed SAP R/3 in large branches and implemented SAP Business One in smaller branches. Such a policy of ERP systems’ implementation is extremely popular due to a number of reasons:

• the cost of implementation and maintenance of SAP Business One is much lower than in the case of SAP ERP, also known as SAP R/3,
• SAP Business One duration of implementation equals only a dozen or so weeks, whereas in the case of SAP R/3 it lasts at least 6 months,
• it is easier for a local implementation company to take care of adjusting the system to local regulations and business standards,
• thanks to close integration between SAP Business One and SAP R/3 in the areas of financial reporting and logistics, implementing SAP Business One still allows a mother company to have full access to information on a local branch.

Beneficial downgrading

At the end of 2007, TALLY WEIJL management, having taken the aforementioned benefits into consideration, decided to replace SAP R/3 in the Polish branch of the company with the SAP solution dedicated to SME sector. In corporations with an international reach, making a decision about choosing or changing an ERP system has to be backed by thorough analyses. More importantly, the new solution has to meet all the expectations on the part of owners guarding interest of the whole corporation as well as expectations of people responsible for the development of a particular department.SAP Business One system facilitates work at the same time meeting the guidelines of corporate reporting.

"The implementation of  SAP Business One conducted by SUPREMIS Sp. z o.o. significantly improved effective management of the company" – Director TALLY WEiJL Poland  - Maja Gawrońska.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Simplifying, unifying and facilitating bookkeeping processes

SAP Business One significantly simplifies accountants’ work, because all calculations, e.g. exchange rate differences or keeping records for tax purposes, take place in one system without the necessity to manually enter the same data multiple times. Resigning from SAP R/3 allowed to reduce employment in the accounting department by 2 people and eliminate errors occurring during data entering.

Reporting for use by the group

Replacing SAP R/3 by SAP Business One did not result in lower quality data flowing from the Polish branch to foreign headquarters. Moreover, the reports created on the basis of SAP Business One are congruent with GAAP standards while available data can be presented in various perspectives, i.e. from the angle of charts of account adopted in Poland and abroad. Accountants can additionally introduce analytical descriptions congruent with descriptions used throughout the whole corporation. Owing to this, full uniformity of reporting has been maintained even though SAP R/3 is functioning in other branches of the company.

Resigning from auxiliary software

Apart from SAP R/3, the Polish branch resigned from Subiekt application for warehouse management and from human resource - payroll application. The tasks of the two systems are now handled by SAP Business One. Greater capabilities of the system in the area of accounting in line with Polish regulations allowed to eliminate Microsoft Office Excel application. The only remaining system is a retail sale application utilized in company’s stores around the world.

The effects of system change

The choice of SAP’s solution dedicated to small and medium enterprises turned out to be a beneficial solution for the corporation with an international reach. The implementation was conducted swiftly and resulted in reduced costs of employment as well as reduced costs of operating and maintenance of the system. Additionally,  SUPREMIS local implementation company guarantees quickly reacting to changing regulations and implementing new features on the company’s demand .