Benetton Group is a total lifestyle brand that offers fashion products from casual to elegant to fit every scene of life. Benetton Japan Co., Ltd. is Benetton Groups’ Japanese office and offers wholesale services of their famous apparel brands, United Colors of Benetton and Sisley, as well as sports brands of Nordica and Rollerblade. They also controls the license of United Colors of Benetton in Japan. Being a successful retailer at the same time, Benetton Japan manages the POS data collected from their directly managed stores throughout Japan for marketing operations. Recently, Benetton Headquarters in Italy started a project to build a data warehouse (DWH) and collect the world-wide sales information in XML format as part of their global marketing operations. Benetton Japan chose ASTERIA WARP to be used as a data federation hub to connect their data to the DWH in Benetton Headquarters.
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| Senior Manager of System Division, Administration Department IT Specialist Mr. Toichi Oami |
Benetton Group is a global company with over 5000 stores in 120 countries throughout the world. As each store gathers and accumulates sales information, Benetton Group has built a large scale DWH environment in their Headquarters in Italy to collect those data in XML format. Benetton Japan needed to build an information system to deliver the sales information collected from their directly managed stores to the DWH as the accounting system was renovated in 2007. Mr. Toichi Ooami, General Manager of System Division, Administration Department said, “As delivering the data was going smoothly throughout Europe including EU, we decided to materialize the DWH federation for the stores in Asia as well. But we had to complete the work in just over three months and the development itself had to be done in a very short time.”
As flexible changes in data definitions are possible in XML format, they needed an environment that is flexible to meet any changes in data federation specifications. Furthermore, they had to develop an information system in a brief period of a few months and therefore it was essential for them to find a product with high compatibility with XML. It was then they drew attention to ASTERIA WARP.
Mr. Ooami had built an information system with Benetton Headquarters before to enable data federation for product, product arrival, and client information in XML. He therefore wanted, considering various possibilities in future, to build a new information system with a hub function that can also integrate the old system. He decided then to choose ASTERIA WARP. He said he had in fact a chance to see Infoteria’s products and was impressed with their high technology and product concept four years before. “I saw at the exhibition a demonstration where ASTERIA enabled data federation only in a few minutes just by connecting components in the GUI environment,” he said. “I was honestly surprised at the product that could make data federation in such a short time.”
When Mr. Ooami selected and examined a number of products to build a new information system, he found that ASTERIA WARP was the only one that met the specifications he wanted. ASTERIA WARP provided development environment with a “non-coding” method and a long list of connectable protocols, databases, and data formats. It fulfilled all the fuFrom the beginning, Mr. Ooami intended to have his staff develop the system themselves using a newly bought software package but felt high expectations on ASTERIA WARP in creating a de facto data federation with flexibility. “We knew by a pro forma calculation that we could develop an information system by ourselves at a lower cost if we wanted something just to meet the specifications for the moment,” he said. “But then when we thought of scalability, we wanted to avoid continually developing systems that need a lot of maintenance and lack versatility. Other than the federation we were going to have with our Headquarters, we were sure there would be occasions again later where we will be forced to have a similar kind of data federation in different cases. We decided therefore to make a highly scalable information system rather than a stopgap information system investment.”
As of March 2008, the POS server accumulates the sales information from around 60 directly managed stores in Japan through batch processing at night and creates CSV data. ASTERIA WARP then converts the CSV data into XML format, enters the information into the data directory database, and sends the data to the FTP receiver at Benetton Headquarters. After the DWH imports the data at Benetton Headquarters, ASTERIA WARP receives the result information from Headquarters and writes the status information into the directory database again. The data are exported to Excel files in the end so that the status of conversion processes and import errors can be checked. “ASTERIA WARP is perfect to read or write data in different information systems,” Mr. Ooami said. “As it has many kinds of components that help data federation, it contributes significantly to decrease development processes and operating costs.” ASTERIA WARP operates in a virtualized environment.
“It is said that the use of sales information in retail business began some time around 2001, but a tool that can be a leading player in data federation does not exist yet,” said Mr. Ooami. “For retail business where multitudes of data gather from stores that must be processed, ASTERIA WARP appears to be a useful tool for data federation.” He said he would be expecting more from ASTERIA WARP.
Operating in the production environment started in the end of December 2007 but the actual development time was only about five weeks including the system testing with Benetton Headquarters. Mr. Ooami said that they had to build data federation infrastructure with Benetton Headquarters in Italy in a very short period. “Partly because of the short development time, we asked tons of questions through Sumisho Computer Systems that provided us maintenance services,” he said. “Infoteria answered us kindly and thoughtfully and responded very quickly. That really helped us make a good and smooth progress with the project. They even provided us a sample program. We were very much impressed with the way they undertook the work with all their energy and enthusiasm.” Moreover, Mr. Ooami added that his staff made a great improvement in their development speed after taking the product seminar held by Infoteria. Surprisingly, their actual development time was only about two weeks.
They had built a data federation system with Benetton Headquarters in XML format before but comparing the work periods, the amount of development processes was apparently about a half this time. In addition to the reduction in development costs, they are also seeing a significant effect in the information system operations. Mr. Ooami said, “Now that we can judge the status visually, we have higher traceability.”
Mr. Ooami is now planning for a future project. He wants to integrate another information system, through which they are receiving XML data on product information from Benetton Headquarters, into ASTERIA WARP. “Sometimes you get a change request without any lead time, as it is easy to make changes in XML,” said Mr. Ooami. “Once you have used ASTERIA WARP that enables flexible changes in any specifications, you can never go back to the old systems.”
Benetton Japan is also proactively engaged in establishing internal control though information technology. Mr. Ooami is going to use ASTERIA WARP, which is now the core of their information system federation, in their data inspection in order to reduce the burden of monitoring operations for internal control. “You need to go into each system to obtain the logs and other data to inspect each information system,” said Mr. Ooami, and then continued to suggest the new use of ASTERIA WARP with confidence. “Having ASTERIA WARP playing a central role in the information system federation should make the monitoring possible without data inspection of each information system.”
* The architecture as of May 2008.
Benetton Japan Co., Ltd.
It was established in 1985 as the Japanese office of Benetton Group S.p.A that provides fashionable and colorful clothing and accessories special to Italy. It has about 140 retail stores in Japan, offers wholesale services of apparel and sports brands, and is in charge of the license management.
| Address | 4-3-10 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan |
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| URL | http://www.benetton.co.jp/ |
