Selfridges: Store Expansion / Technology Infrastructure Design and Delivery

Selfridges, a prestigious UK retailer anchored around a flagship London store, turned to Accenture for help opening three new locations. The program included revamping the company's information technology infrastructure so that it could gain exceptional visibility, make better business decisions and grow profitably.

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Selfridges wanted to accelerate its growth by adding several new department stores in Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow to its sole flagship store in London. The decision represented a major strategic change for Selfridges—a change that would take place with unprecedented speed and scale.

Selfridges teamed with Accenture to transform Selfridges from a retailer with a single location to one with several centrally managed sites.

Accenture and Selfridges began this massive undertaking by revamping the retailer’s information technology infrastructure so that Selfridges could make better business decisions with consistent and streamlined information. A joint team created a broad applications architecture, covering point-of-sale, merchandise management and finance systems.

"Through their expertise across the whole application landscape, Accenture enabled Selfridges to develop streamlined information flows across the business. This has created a strong platform for Selfridges to grow our business by enabling us to focus on brand profitability, utilising frequent, timely and consistent management information provided by tools and processes developed by a joint Selfridges and Accenture team," said Peter Williams, director of finance at Selfridges.

Accenture then replaced Selfridges' core merchandising system with the Retek Merchandising System. This effort was completed in record time and represented the largest SKU item populations in the world using Retek. Accenture also developed a warehouse management system—something that Selfridges never had before—and replaced the point-of-sale system for its Manchester store.

Selfridges continues to build on its success, having upgraded its version of Retek in 2001.

Through its collaboration with Accenture, Selfridges has daily visibility of margin by store, department and Stock Keeping Unit. It can also track inventory by level and location, and record cost of sales directly.

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