Fujitsu solution supports LuLu Group’s ambitious growth plans
Madhava Rao, CIO, LuLu Group.

Fujitsu solution supports LuLu Group’s ambitious growth plans

When the LuLu Group needed to deliver high levels of flexibility and performance as well as the ability to support SAP HANA-based applications, it deployed Fujitsu’s Integrated System PRIMEFLEX for SAP Landscapes. The result was a fast, scalable, flexible and cost-efficient SAP operation supporting the company’s ambitious growth plans.

The LuLu Group, based in the UAE, has been using SAP software to support its core business functions for over 10 years. However, due to its strong growth, the old system needed to be replaced to keep pace with the increasing dynamics and complexity in modern retail business.

“Data was distributed on various systems and we needed to consolidate the application landscape in order to support our business users with real-time analytics for fast decisions, as well as streamlining our entire IT and supply chain processes,” said Madhava Rao, CIO, LuLu Group.

“Beside cost reduction for our IT and SAP operation, we also wanted to be able to optimise our internal processes and data centre operations.”

Therefore, the LuLu Group decided to gain the business values that innovative in-memory technology and SAP HANA offer for such a dynamic retail giant.

In the first phase of the project, it became an early adaptor of Business Warehouse on HANA to improve the analytics capabilities.

In phase two, the company migrated its core SAP ERP System to Business Suite on HANA as one of the early adopters in the Middle East.

The LuLu Group was eager to exploit the new HANA capabilities and to increase performance for IT, so it was looking for a trusted advisor who could deliver an end-to-end journey to HANA.

It asked Fujitsu, a pioneering SAP HANA partner, to help design and roll out this path to the HANA digital core.

“Fujitsu Integrated Systems provide an innovative, HANA ready and future-proof SAP solution that is a stable, scalable, fast and absolutely flexible environment for our critical business functions,” said Rao. “It was the natural choice to aid the on-going development of the business.”

Fujitsu Integrated System PRIMEFLEX for SAP Landscapes with HANA provides a pre-defined, pre-integrated and pre-tested combination of servers, storage, network connectivity and software from Fujitsu and specialist partners, such as NetApp and SUSE, to ensure the highest quality and fast time to value.

Powered by the FlexFrame Orchestrator software component, it facilitates the operation of SAP applications, SAP databases and the SAP HANA platform and makes it faster and more effective. It simplifies the management of complex SAP environments, optimises planning and operation and change management.

Thus, the LuLu Group’s IT environment is future-proofed for years to come.

“The Global Fujitsu SAP Competence Center located in Walldorf, Germany, was with us every step of the way from design to implementation to post-go-live support,” said Rao.

“The entire project of the Business Suite on HANA implementation took 15 weeks but the migration itself was carefully planned so there would be minimal downtime.

“We took a ‘big bang’ approach and migrated our entire SAP ERP landscape in a 17-hour period.”

Every aspect of the LuLu Group’s SAP business operations, including HR, finance, logistics, transportation and material management, is now successfully running in the new Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX environment.

The project also came in on time and on budget and any issues that arose during design and implementation were quickly resolved.

“The Fujitsu local and global teams, together with the LuLu Group team, did a great job in ensuring maximum uptime and minimal disruption to the business. That is impressive,” said Rao.

The LuLu Group now has an innovative and future-proof business environment that provides not only a more responsive user experience but also benefits from all innovations that SAP brings now and in the future with SAP HANA.

For example, the entire legacy 8TB database has been shrunk to below 2TB using the SAP HANA compression feature. The system enables accelerated data flow as well as faster access to data sources from various SAP and non-SAP systems.

“We can now get analytics and complex reporting within seconds instead of hours,” said Rao.

“That improves user efficiency and boosts productivity, which ultimately leads to a better customer experience and satisfaction.”

FUJITSU Integrated System PRIMEFLEX for SAP Landscapes allows all of LuLu Group’s stores to handle overnight data processing, compared to managing it in stages as was the case previously.

This makes for a more efficient supply chain with automatic inventory replenishment. It also has much enhanced availability and business continuity. With new highly improved IT operations processes, even day-to-day IT operations were streamlined.

By making use of SnapShots of the databases the back-up windows of the environment were greatly reduced.

“The application back-up between primary and secondary databases used to take too much time,” said Rao.

“Now, we can back-up our entire application and database far more quickly, which gives us better resilience.”

With the added boost of having FlexFrame manage all application services, the new environment also provides a roadmap for future growth – critical to a company that is expanding so rapidly.

“We could easily manage more stores within the existing infrastructure by just scaling more server and storage resources and, with plans to open 50 to 60 in the next five years, it is great to have that bandwidth,” said Rao.

The LuLu Group now has a robust, agile and flexible infrastructure solution underpinning its entire operations, ensuring optimal performance and seamless communications between systems. This will provide a solid platform on which to build for the future.

“The FlexFrame-powered SAP Landscapes advantage is that it encompasses the entire hardware and SAP application landscape for running SAP HANA from storage to servers to networking in one pre-configured, turn-key solution that is simple to deploy and flexible to run,” said Rao.

“As we grow, we align our project steps with SAP and with Fujitsu experts and appreciate this as a very trustful collaboration. Fujitsu has provided us with the ideal solution to run our business more efficiently and to provide SAP HANA functionality across more than 120 stores.”

We asked Madhava Rao further questions to find out more about the system:

Why did your old system need to be replaced?

To support our ever-growing data and application requirements, we were looking for a single scalable solution with reduced TCO and a partner who can bring a reliable solution in terms of security, high availability and DR capabilities.

The TCO of our existing data centre is very high and when the industry started offering large scale solutions based on X86 platform we decided it was time to make the switch. It also becomes easy to manage the skill set of the employees supporting the operations 24×7 leveraging the advantages of supporting a single solution hosting multiple systems.

What was the problem with having data distributed on different systems?

The complexity associated in maintaining different systems and the cost to provide the computing resources to keep up with the demand while maintaining acceptable performance levels becomes too high to handle from both administrative and infrastructure standpoints. With the advent of social, mobile and embedded technologies and the constant need to make decisions in real time, it became very complex to integrate the collected data to offer a single version of the truth at all times.

What was the importance of having real-time analytics?

Real time analytics is very important considering the dynamic nature of the retail industry Lulu operates. It gives us visibility into the operations in a transparent manner substantial for decision making in an effective way. We can monitor and respond in real time across all business verticals and processes whether it is supply chain, promotional management, human resources etc, helping us serve our customers efficiently and meet their expectations.

Why did you want to streamline your IT and supply chain processes?

Lulu believes it is critical to have an efficient IT system which can enhance and enrich your data into information usable for the business. With Fujitsu FlexFrame, we have found the right match. A single solution which can scale-up to host multiple systems efficiently offering scalability, high availability, cost effectiveness and performs remarkably in terms of meeting our expectations across the chosen parameters.

By streamlining the supply chain processes, we have increased visibility and control at a lower cost and at the same time, we are able to manage and forge better relationships with our supplier network resulting in a win for all the stakeholders.

How did the new system enable you to optimise your internal processes and data centre operations?

Our data centre is completely virtualised across the Lintel and Wintel infrastructure thus optimising all internal processes in a unique way. This improved the speed and efficiency with which we respond to the business needs consistently meeting the end-user expectations all at the same time without compromising on the best practices in terms of data protection, security, performance and high availability. Thereby reducing the complexity of managing multiple systems and solutions.

To what extent has the system future-proofed your company’s operations?

With the FlexFrame’s unique architecture and landscape, we can easily keep up with the fast-paced technological advances and demand from our customers without having to worry about our infrastructure frequently. Whether it is installing a new solution or creating a new test scenario or upgrading an existing system we can do it on the fly and at the same time ensure that everything is based upon best practices and consistently meeting the business requirements and SLAs.

Were you pleased with the amount of time implementation took?

Yes. After the migration of a couple of systems, my team could scale-up rapidly. Once you understand the concepts of virtualisation across SAP and how Flexframe goes about it, it becomes easy to handle and implement fully realising the benefits and harmonising the best practices across your SAP landscapes.

What have been the main benefits of the new system?

The new system is robust, easy to expand, offers better redundancy and can support multiple SAP components which is critical to the whole group’s operation.

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