PEP, Africa’s largest single brand retailer, has selected Centric Software‘s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to improve efficiencies and optimize product assortments to further business growth. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home décor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.
With a footprint of more than 2,500 retail stores and a workforce of over 17,000 employees, PEP offers wanted products and services at the lowest possible prices to make it possible for everyone to look and feel good. With the retailer expecting to sell more than 760 million products this year, the need to enhance their customer-led strategy to match the demand became paramount.
“Up to this point, a lot of our planning was based on historical sales and contributions, done in isolation across various departments and sub-departments. Assortments within each department would be created without having visibility of a complete head-to-toe customer look”, says Hannes Baard, Merchandise and Planning Solutions Manager at PEP.
Tobie Lourens, Business and Solutions Architect at PEP, reflects on how the business considered a variety of options before settling on PLM. “PEP wanted to provide its customers with a full spectrum solution. We initially scoped for an assortment planning tool, but soon realized our teams needed full visibility and control of costs, supply chains and workflow from the initial idea through to in-store.”
After being exposed to Centric PLM, PEP realized it offered so much more than assortment planning. Centric PLM aligned with PEP’s wider business goals, as well as being 100% flexible and configurable, with the ability to integrate with their assortment planning tool. “The user-intuitive interface and functionality really appealed to our merchandise and planning teams and the technical team were won over with the architecture and configurability of Centric PLM,” explains Baard.
PEP plans to connect all users across the globe, with buyers, merchandisers and suppliers all collaborating within a ‘single source of the truth’.
PEP Stores set ambitious KPIs for their PLM implementation based on 5 pillars: customer satisfaction, resource efficiencies, growth, operating profit and market share. After implementing Centric PLM, the business expects an increase in sales and a reduction in markdowns.
“With Centric PLM, our product development and buying teams can conceptualize the range, build it out and use it as a funnel to get to the final assortment that lands with the customer,” says Lourens.
“Centric Software is delighted to partner with PEP at such a pivotal point in their journey. We are excited at the prospect of enhancing their customer-first and collaborative product development strategy.” comments Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software.
