BUYING INTO THE VISION:
CREATING A PLM COMMUNITY
AT ACKERMANS

Copyright 2017 Centric Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

THE VALUES BEHIND VALUEAckermans is both the leading value retailer and a prominent fixture in the history of South Africa. Founded by Gus Ackerman in Cape Town – where the business is still headquartered– the company’s focus has remained consistent for a century. Ackermans celebrated 100 years of “bringing value to life” in 2016.
Now part of the Pepkor retail group (which spans South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Europe) Ackermans sells affordable styles for men, women, children and infants
through more than 600 stores spread across Southern Africa.

INFORMATION SYNCHRONIZATION
Although the company sells in Southern Africa, its buying, merchandising, and sourcing operations
are global. As Raynard Potgieter, Buying Director, explains, these had become impossible tomanage in an informal, Excel-based environment.
“The work our buyers were doing was almost entirely on paper and in spreadsheets, which
created a great deal of unnecessary complexity, and allowed a lot of errors to creep in,” Potgieter
says. “Since our communication with international suppliers was mainly based on email, we hadno audit trail for information and it was becoming increasingly difficult to track the progress of a
product through its lifecycle.”Slow communication and limited collaboration were also proving problematic elsewhere in thebusiness introducing delays and affecting financial outcomes.
“A lack of visibility into key things like margins, exchange rate, and supplier loading was causing us
significant problems,” says Renée Jain, Supply Chain Systems Manager at Ackermans. “To analyze
our margins, for example, one team member would have to walk all the way around the building,collecting different spreadsheets in different formats, then attempt to re-collate, re-format andconsolidate all that data into one big roll-up. That process could take two to three weeks and inthat time the margins would have moved and the data would be already outdated.”
Ackermans turned to PLM as a way of centralizing this critical information as well as to standardize
and streamline buying and other processes - providing instant intelligence and allowing coreteams to focus on productivity rather than administration.
“Ours were complex processes,” says Jain, “and we needed a system structured and sophisticatedenough to help our users to concentrate on what they do best, but also flexible in a way thatwould allow us to make it our own.”““I’m most excited about the way that Centric allows us to accessinformation right away and that it aggregates that information without
any manual intervention.
AN EVOLVING STORY

Challenges+ Paper and spreadsheet-based processes with
no audit trail+ No standardization between processes anddepartments+ Time-consuming manual administration,
resulting in outdated information+ Complex balancing of foreign currency
exchange rates+ No real-time communication with suppliers,
leading to inaccurate costing

Copyright 2017 Centric Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

Initially, Ackermans intended to develop its own in-house PLM solution but abandoned
that idea when, as Jain puts it, “we realized that, after three years of development, we hadbuilt perhaps a quarter of what we really needed.” Shortly thereafter, Ackermans began toevaluate PLM vendors, seeking the right balance of data centralization and configurability.
“We evaluated another vendor and while the software did exactly what it said on the box, wewould never have been able to configure it to support our changing processes,” says Jain.
“And I really do mean changing processes; even after we made our selection and began
implementation, we were still mapping out our PLM journey.”
The flexibility to accommodate the fast pace of change of the fashion industry is one of thepillars of Centric Software’s Agile DeploymentTM methodology, which caught Ackermans
attention while attending an event celebrating the Silicon Valley-based vendor’s expansion
into South Africa.
“That event was the first time I realized what a highly-configurable solution could mean toa company like Ackermans that was still figuring out what PLM could do for us,” says Jain.
Ackermans then invited Centric to conduct a further proof of concept demonstration, wherelocal consultants configured the solution in less than 24 hours to showcase a “day in thelife” of an Ackermans buyer working in PLM. “Our whole team was wowed by the fact thatevery screen was set out exactly the way we’d asked it to be,” says Jain, “and it was clearthat Centric PLM wasn’t going to require our teams to change their ways of working but thesolution could be quickly configured to fit our evolving needs”.

GROWING INTO PLM
Ackerman’s officially went live with Centric PLM in January 2016. Following a short pilot in its
childrenswear department, the solution was rolled out to all divisions six months later, withthe implementation prioritizing, revisiting and perfecting critical processes in line with Centric’sagile approach and Ackerman’s evolving ways of working.
“It’s always a challenge for us finding people that we can rely on and trust, but Centric’s local
consultants just made the implementation so easy,” says Jain. “Their flexibility and their ability
to make changes and have them ready the very next day, meant that we could actually growinto the system as it was being implemented.”

CLEAR OUT PAPER AND ADOPTING DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
Although Ackermans has quickly realized a range of benefits since going live with Centric, oneof the most significant is what Jain refers to as a digital transformation.
“Before PLM, our buyers’ desks would be piled high with files upon files containing printoutsof Excel spreadsheets and emails and everyone had their own different ways of working,” shesays. “Now, working in Centric PLM, all of that information is standardized and digital: all ourbuyers are working inside the system and everything, from quoting and tendering to suppliercommunications, is in one place allowing us to cost accurately on the basis of clear, consistentinformation. Desks where you can actually see the desks might sound like a funny way tomeasure success, but that transformation has really been critical to our business strategy.”

LIVING IN THE MOMENT, IN REAL-TIME
For Ackermans, the most significant result of this digital transformation is immediate access tobusiness-critical information and insights that might once have taken days or weeks to analyze.
“I’m most excited about the way that Centric allows us to access information right away and thatit aggregates that information without any manual intervention,” explains Raynard Potgieter.
“Combining Excel spreadsheets was time consuming and included a huge amount of scope forerror, meaning that decisions being made were not based on accurate information. In Centric,a single button click gets us real-time intelligence that we can use to make informed decisions.”
One example of the value of this in-the-moment intelligence lies in the aforementioned marginroll-ups, which once took weeks to assemble. “Today, we have views into the same informationthat are online and immediate,” says Jain. “Any changes a buyer is making now, this second,
are reflected in those roll-ups with no delay, giving us information that everybody can rely on.”Similar reductions in time spent manually extracting and updating information were realized
in Ackermans’ international supply chain operations. While the company sells its products inSouth African Rand, it sources in other currencies, making it prone to in-season fluctuations
in exchange rates. Before PLM, Ackermans’ buyers would spend up to a week re-calculating
costs to account for these changes in the foreign exchange market, whereas today that same
information is pulled live into Centric PLM, and costs and margins are adjusted automatically.
With the ability communicate with suppliers on a style by style basis, the time it takes
Ackermans’ buying team to produce tenders has also been reduced from two days to twohours. And at the same time, much larger bottlenecks have also been eliminated elsewherein the company’s operations – notably planning and purchase order management - reducing
stress on internal teams as well as suppliers.

Results

FOCUSING ON THE FUTURE+ Margin calculations now take seconds, notweeks

Beyond raw results, Ackermans and Centric Software both believe strongly in forgoing longlasting partnerships. With the solution now live in all departments, Jain cites Centric’s work
ethic and hands-on approach as being instrumental to the success of the project.

+ Tenders produced in two hours, not two days

“The people Centric had on the ground with us delivered what they promised, within theproject timelines, with go-live achieved the day it was originally scheduled.”
Ackermans is now looking towards the future, targeting extending the project scope to include
Centric’s suite of mobile applications to deliver the next stages of its vision for value. “Workingwith Centric gives us the ability to develop better product, to better serve our customer and toscale the business for future growth,” says Potgieter.

Copyright 2017 Centric Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

+ Complete digital transformation; all buying
processes now take place within PLM.

+ Automatic updates of exchange rates – evenin-season+ All supplier communication handled in PLM,
with full auditing and accountability

ABOUT ACKERMANSThe Ackermans story goes back as far as 1916, when Gus Ackerman opened the first storein Wynberg in Cape Town. His vision for the store was to create a place where customers could
find great products at fantastic prices, which is exactly what Ackermans became. Ackermans was,subsequently, bought by the Pepkor Group in 1986.
Today, there are more than 600 Ackermans stores in 5 countries, making us a leading value fashion
retailer for the whole family – continuously setting the standard for value and affordability. With awide selection of fashion for ladies, kids, babies and men, as well as homeware, cellular and key
financial products, we’ll keep bringing value to your life every day.

ABOUT CENTRIC SOFTWARE
From its headquarters in Silicon Valley and offices in trend capitals around the world, Centric Software
builds technologies for the most prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor andconsumer goods. Its flagship product lifecycle management (PLM) platform, Centric 8, delivers
enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, business planning, quality
and collection management functionality tailored for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric SMB
packages extended PLM including innovative technology and key industry learnings tailored for smallbusinesses.
Centric Software has received multiple industry awards, including the Frost & Sullivan Global ProductDifferentiation Excellence Award in Retail, Fashion and Apparel PLM in 2016 and Frost & Sullivan’s
Global Retail, Fashion and Apparel PLM Product Differentiation Excellence Award in 2012. RedHerring named Centric to its Top 100 Global list in 2013, 2015 and 2016.

655 Campbell Technology Parkway | Suite 200 | Campbell | CA 95008 USA
Phone: 1 408 574 7802 | Fax: 1 408 377 3002
www.centricsoftware.com
Copyright 2017 Centric Software, Inc. All rights reserved.