Fujitsu Australia & New Zealand has just completed the installation of an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in 20 new GSM Retail stores in a record nine weeks, just in time for the Christmas rush.

GSM Retail is a new national reseller of Vodafone mobile phones and plans and went to market in July with the urgent requirement to organise modules for operations, sales, inventory and procurement in a unified system across all stores.

According to Fujitsu, the installation was performed in a record timeframe for a SAP (systems, applications and products) project in Australia and New Zealand.

The final integrated solution encompasses all the core business functionality for the entire organisation, and provides a complete, unified view of all business transactions and relationships to support GSM Retail in growing the enterprise.

GSM Retail reportedly chose Fujitsu and its SAP proposal in a competitive tender against Oracle, Microsoft and Netsuite, to deck-out its new concept stores.

The new stores are all Vodafone-branded retail outlets located nationally within Myer department stores. In addition to the first 20 concept stores opened this year, GSM will continue its roll-out with 30 more stores early next year and thereafter keep pace with Myer’s expansion to 75 stores, says the company.

“We have plans for rapid growth and needed an ERP system that was not only capable of supporting our expansion in the lead-up to Christmas, but also of providing the functionality, flexibility and scalability to handle increasingly diverse business and product streams over time,” said GSM Retail’s group financial controller, Alexis Phitidis.

“We were impressed by Fujitsu’s professionalism, their demonstrable expertise and skills with SAP, and their ability to work with us in meeting our aggressive timeframes with a best practice solution. The team readily adapted to our business requirements to ensure the project was delivered on time, within budget and to the agreed scope. Working with Fujitsu gives us a single point of accountability for the software, hardware and services relating to our ERP system.”

Phitidis says despite the short time frame, Fujitsu did not compromise on the quality of the installation.

Fujitsu used a SAP baseline solution using SAP Best Practice building blocks with pre-configured processes installed. This allowed the Fujitsu consultants to leverage existing best-in-class processes and templates to expedite the implementation rather than starting from scratch.

As a result of its successful delivery of the initial implementation, Joe Landsman, CEO of the GSM Retail Group, has commissioned Fujitsu to further expand its solution footprint in New Zealand, Fiji and Japan.