Identifying the Need for Business Change

The Middle East is one of the hottest growth markets in the world, and nowhere is the competition more fierce than in the cutthroat retail market.

Established in 1987, Kamal Osman Jamjoom (KOJ) is a multi-channel retail group headquartered in Dubai. The company was formed as one of The Body Shop’s earliest franchises and remains one of the most successful; over the years, the organisation has evolved to become a franchisee, a franchisor and a thriving brand organisation in its own right. Alongside international brands The Body Shop and The Early Learning Centre, KOJ now also operates two regional brands of its own: lingerie and nightwear outfit Nayomi, and cosmetics and accessories chain Mikyajy.

It’s been a period of rapid expansion for the company, and provided a steep learning curve: the depth of skills and knowledge acquired over the years promotes a rapid deployment of strategies and tactical initiatives, and the group now employs over 2000 staff across seven countries. Growth has been supported by a strong focus on good customer service, and in 2007 KOJ achieved a turnover of US$100 million and established is first regional office in Europe.

But resting on its laurels is not an option for KOJ in an industry as fiercely competitive as retail, where businesses face stiff competition from both homegrown organisations and international firms looking to take advantage of the significant opportunities offered by the Middle Eastern marketplace. As part of its extensive plans to enhance and expand its operations across the Gulf region and beyond, KOJ identified a number of key initiatives that would help the organisation meet its growth and performance objectives. Thameem Rizvon, Group IT Manager at KOJ, explains further.

“Our strategy for expansion includes continuing to grow our franchise brands, leveraging and expanding our own brands in key international markets and developing the multi-channel offering in future ventures across e-commerce, catalogue businesses, kiosk, trolley and store-in-store,” he says. “In order to achieve this, we understood the need for a scalable, integrated set of applications that could manage all aspects of our business.”

One such initiative was the implementation of a powerful, integrated operational platform to manage all its brands and stores and with a focus on rapid route to value. “As the Kamal Osman Jamjoom Group is responsible for both its own highly successful brands and for two well-regarded international brands, The Body Shop and Early Learning Centre, we understand the importance of providing the best possible retail experience to our customers,” continues Rizvon. “With the planned expansion of our group, it becomes even more important that we are able to manage our staff and provide them with high standards of training, that we have full transparency and management of our supply chain to meet customer demand, and that we have a clear and consistent view of our whole operation to enable us to plan our growth strategy accordingly.”

KOJ was facing challenges around the many systems used to manage data across its stores, which led to data integrity issues from multiple versions of that data. Previous attempts at integrating these systems had proved unsuccessful and in addition, as business expanded, KOJ was becoming increasingly affected by the lack of effective planning systems. Merchandise planning was not accurate and there were no opportunities to plan seasonal stock targets or respond to customer demands for improved planning and forecasting. With a desire to improve sales and profit density in stores and make informed decisions based on timely insight into the performance of merchandise, KOJ identified the implementation of an ERP system as best for managing its business.

Having identified the need for an ERP solution, the selection team of executive directors and department heads at KOJ identified Oracle as offering the best solution for the business. Not only did Oracle provide proven capabilities for its integrated retail footprint in retailers around the globe, but its best practice functionality offered KOJ the opportunity to implement standard processes across all four of its businesses, achieving the aim of a consistent set of data across the organisation.

“Integration was key to our decision,” says Rizvon. “We needed a consistent set of data across our brands. One of the reasons we selected Oracle was its proven integration and the strength of the best practice it brings. Through the integration and roll out of a common set of retail practices, we could simplify and standardise processes across the brands.”

The implementation promises to help the group gain greater insight into (and management of) business processes around key retail activities including merchandising, planning, supply chain, demand forecasting and stores practices, whilst supporting the back office and administrative functions. Oracle’s integrated solutions are designed to provide a clear and consistent view of all operations, which will enable KOJ to make informed decisions, increase efficiency and achieve visibility across the enterprise. Rollout of the solutions is ongoing and scheduled to complete in late 2009.

“These solutions offer us the most powerful applications to manage all of the processes, along with the flexibility to expand as the group grows, and to integrate new applications as we require them,” concludes Rizvon. “Growing from one store and one brand to four brands across 420 plus locations in seven countries in two decades is a challenge. It gets complex to manage different systems for each department and brand across different locations, and it therefore became necessary to have one consolidated system to manage data from various sources.”

Kamal Osman Jamjoom

Headquarters: Dubai
Industry: Retail
No. of stores: 403  
Employees:  2000

2007 turnover: US$100 million

Smart Thinking

KOJ created a dedicated project team to focus on the implementation and development of the Oracle solutions, named SMART. With CEO Kamal Jamjoom as project sponsor and a team of 10 people from different departments plus IT resources, the retailer has chosen to take a vanilla approach to implementation in order to facilitate a smooth deployment process and a more rapid route to value.

The SMART project is divided into three key phases. The first phase involving the implementation of the basic Oracle E-Business and key Oracle Retail merchandising modules is currently underway and go-live is expected in the first quarter of 2008. Phase two incorporating the more extensive Oracle E-Business Suite module and remaining merchandising applications will begin early in 2008 and completion is expected mid way through the year, before phase three completes in 2009.