{"id":540943,"date":"2024-06-14T12:14:34","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T10:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=540943"},"modified":"2024-06-14T12:15:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T10:15:00","slug":"spars-major-sap-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/it-services\/540943-spars-major-sap-problem.html","title":{"rendered":"Spar’s major SAP problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Spar Group has said that parts of its business operations will transition away from SAP’s software following the implementation difficulties<\/a> it had in 2023.<\/p>\n

Spar Group CEO Angelo Swart revealed their plans to drop SAP for parts of the business in a recent interview<\/a> on 702’s The Money Show with Bruce Whitfield<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Swart said that the business will not wholly transition away from SAP architecture but will move to a new platform for its warehouse management.<\/p>\n

“We have made the decision to move the warehouse management system away from the core SAP architecture; however, we will keep our core enterprise resource planning (ERP) system on the SAP backbone, and that accounts for 80% of the system on any event,” Swart told 702.<\/p>\n

The group’s recent interim results<\/a> ending 31 March noted that two issues relating to the integration remain: inefficiencies of the warehouse management system and the impact of the lack of visibility of prices and subsidies on the gross profit margin.<\/p>\n

Spar says that to mitigate the latter, “further developments and designs are being implemented to improve the pricing screens and will be productionised in September 2024.”<\/p>\n

However, the company has decided to implement a “more cost-effective warehouse management system” better suited to its business.<\/p>\n

Spar said in September 2023 that the implementation at its KwaZulu-Natal distribution centre resulted in an estimated loss in turnover of R1.6 billion and a loss in profits of R720 million.<\/p>\n

The SAP rollout at Spar’s KwaZulu-Natal distribution centre began in February 2023. Spar said it faced various go-live and integration issues that negatively impacted its operations in the province.<\/p>\n

To mitigate the impact, Spar began supplying its retailers in the province from its Eastern Cape, South Rand, and North Rand distribution centres.<\/p>\n

The KZN distribution centre eventually resumed regular servicing in August of that year.<\/p>\n

Spar Group’s chief technology officer, Mark Huxtable, resigned soon after<\/a> the SAP debacle, although this was said to be for personal reasons.<\/p>\n

Shoprite, one of Spar’s competitors, also had teething problems with its SAP rollout, with the retailer partially blaming the upgrades<\/a> for its most significant drop in share price since 1999.<\/p>\n

However, despite its challenges with the SAP rollout, it now credits it with its massive success in recent years.<\/p>\n

“Our considerable base of 2,791 corporate-owned and managed stores, combined with our enterprise-wide IT system (SAP ERP), provides us with a proximity and platform advantage when it comes to executing our daily operations and delivering on strategic plans,” Shoprite recently told MyBroadband<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shoprite also explained how one of its major successes over the past few years \u2014 its on-demand delivery service Checkers Sixty60 \u2014 benefitted from SAP ERP.<\/p>\n

“SAP Retail is the source of the stock ledger and real-time sales, which are essential for accurate fulfilment of customer orders,” Shoprite stated.<\/p>\n

“The ERP also provides promotional information, prices and article data to Sixty60, which ensures that the prices on Sixty60 are the same as the prices in-store.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spar has announced that it will no longer be using SAP for its warehouse management following the debacle at one its distribution centres last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341175,"featured_media":540965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49317],"tags":[95411,71290,35,3042,24160,95409],"class_list":["post-540943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-services","tag-angelo-swart","tag-checkers-sixty60","tag-headline","tag-sap","tag-shoprite-checkers","tag-spar-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541075,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540943\/revisions\/541075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}