Harris Scarfe Buttons up Material Master Data Processes, Saving $400K AUD with Precisely

Harris Scarfe is one of Australia’s longest running retailers, with over 160 years of experience selling home goods and men and women’s apparel. With over 55 stores nationwide and expansion plans on the horizon, Harris Scarfe needed a solution to easily manage rapid master data growth.

Harris Scarfe’s frequent seasonal range changes throughout the year required a substantial amount of manual effort by end users to enter and update merchandising master data in SAP. These manual processes were not only time consuming, but often led to poor quality data such as incorrect lead times and incorrect product attributes in the system.  “We really needed a solution that would reduce the amount of manual keystrokes done by end users,” said Gert Jan Klaver, Supply Chain Solutions Manager in IT and Shared Services for Harris Scarfe. “We needed a consistent approach to get data into SAP faster and cleaner, and started looking for a data loading tool to automate the process.”

Klaver’s team started using LSMW for master data creation, but quickly realized it would require IT to create and maintain all of the scripts. “It was too complex to use outside of the IT landscape, and required a lot of our time and effort to build the scripts,” said Klaver. “We quickly ruled it out.” LSMW was built to assist IT in initial SAP implementations, and thus too complex for end users to use for day to day migrations. It also didn’t offer the level of security or flexibility that IT was comfortable with using as a long term solution”

Read more about how Harris Scarfe eliminated manual processes and reduced the burden on IT by empowered business users, without compromising security or control.