Matalan
Matalan is one of the UK's leading clothing and homewares retailers offering quality fashion and homewares at up to half the equivalent high street price.
John Hargreaves, the founder of Matalan, discovered the out of town retail US concept that sold a range of food and non-food products at low prices in the 1970’s. John decided to implement the same retail concept in the UK, so in 1985 the first Matalan store opened in Preston. Since then Matalan has grown significantly and by 1995 there were 50 stores across the UK. In 1997, in order to cope with Matalan’s growth, the head office was relocated from Preston to Skelmersdale along with a new distribution centre. Matalan’s success was reinforced by the flotation of the company in May 1998. Matalan now trades from 5 million square feet in over 170 stores.
Challenge
Matalan’s Oracle Financials system was approaching the end of its life in terms of Oracle support. A decision was therefore made to upgrade the current application and database to newer and fully supported versions. The additional challenge for the project was that the upgrade had to take place during one of the busiest periods for the Matalan finance department: year end, when Oracle has the added pressures of important city announcements.
The objective of the Oracle Applications upgrade was to move the system to version R11.s.9/9i as quickly as possible with as little impact to the business as possible.
Capgemini approach
The approach taken for this upgrade project was based on Velocity, which is Capgemini’s Oracle Applications specific implementation methodology embedded within our DELIVER methodology. Velocity was adapted for the purposes of this project to reflect that it was an upgrade and not an implementation project.
The project approach was modified to reflect Oracle on Demand conducting the actual physical upgrades throughout the project cycle. Capgemini’s responsibility was to manage the relationship with Oracle on Demand, manage the project and ensure the system and user testing was planned and carried out effectively.
The system testing was organised in two major User Acceptance Tests (UATs). Firstly the tested the application modules separately, then the integration between these and some of the migrated customisations. Secondly full end-to-end process testing, including all customisations, took place during UAT 2.
Each testing phase was conducted on a fresh upgraded copy of the production system, an approach that was designed to enable Oracle on Demand to iron out any problems before upgrading the live system. This process also brought confidence in the likely duration of the actual upgrade project and timings to enable more accurate implementation planning.
Value Delivered
The project provided Matalan with an approach, project plan, upgrade, and now continued support for their finance system. The solution was delivered ahead of plan and budget with minimal impact on the business.
