Park N Shop implements Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains to manage retail business

The ERP solution, which was deployed by Microsoft partner Jumbo Electronics, provides a tightly integrated business management solution to help Park N Shop control its international retailing operations.

The supermarket chain, part of the Chetna Trading group, operates in several sites in Dubai, the UK and US. The Great Plains solution includes a wide range of features to allow Park N Shop to manage operations from its supply chain and warehouses right through to the supermarket checkouts.

"Great Plains provides an ideal solution to manage our business environment. The solution is highly integrated, giving us a complete overview of every aspect of our operations. This helps us to make decisions quickly and accurately, to maximize our efficiency and to reflect that efficiency by providing our customers with the highest standards of service," said Mahesh Manwani, Managing Director, Chetna Trading and Park N Shop.

The new deployment replaces an existing financial management solution that Park N Shop had outgrown. The new solution implemented by Jumbo covers a much wider scope of the company's operations, and includes modules to deal with multi-currency business, inventory and supply chain, and financials. Microsoft Retail Management System (MRMS) has also been deployed to provide an affordable, easy-to-use, point-of-sale (POS) technology, while software from ProClarity, a Microsoft partner, enables powerful analysis and reporting on business processes.

"A highly dynamic business with a large volume of inventory and turnover like Park N Shop needs a tightly integrated system that handles all the necessary aspects of the business individually, while still providing an overall command of operations. Great Plains is a very reliable solution for this sort of retailer, thanks to the ease of use, and the power and flexibility of the solution. The range of modules available, from Microsoft and from third party software vendors also means that we can tailor solutions to meet the customer's exact requirements," said Mr. M.N.C. Ray, GM, IT Group, part of Jumbo Electronics' Enterprise Systems Division.

Microsoft Business Solutions applications are designed to enable small, medium and enterprise scale businesses to integrate their processes and information to improve business agility, increase business insight and become more efficient.

"Retailers, especially those that operate across several countries such as Park N Shop, have to manage complex supply chains and a fast moving retail environment, where making the right goods available to the customers on time is essential. Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains already provides businesses with a powerful tool to gain insight and control over their activities, but elements such as MRMS are giving our partners and customers in the retail market the perfect solution to managing their issues and maintaining a competitive business edge," said Haider Salloum, Marketing Manager, Microsoft South Gulf.