Clarks: Putting its best foot forward with the foundation for a truly global organization
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
- Asia
- Europe
Country
- United Kingdom
- United States
- China
Product
- IBM FlashSystem 840
- IBM Power 770
- IBM XIV Storage System
Tech Stack
- IBM AIX
- SAP Advanced Planning & Optimization (APO)
- SAP ERP with SAP for Retail
- SAP Global Trade Services
- SAP HR
- SAP Business Warehouse
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Sales & Marketing
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Inventory Management
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Founded in 1825 by brothers Cyrus and James, C&J Clark International (Clarks) is a global designer, manufacturer and retailer of footwear, selling more than 50 million pairs of shoes every year. Headquartered in Somerset, England, Clarks operates in more than 35 countries. The company's business depends on identifying the shoes consumers want, and delivering them rapidly. To do so, the company must quickly gather and analyze information from its fast-growing customer base. Clarks relies on a range of SAP applications, including SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization, SAP ERP and SAP Business Warehouse, running on virtualized IBM Power® 770 servers and IBM XIV® storage.
The Challenge
Clarks, a fast-growing shoe retailer, needed to continually provide the business with feedback about which products are a hit with customers, and use those insights to inform future designs. The company extended the SAP solution supporting its UK business to include its US and Asian operations, enabling it to avoid the overhead of managing multiple systems and simplify analysis of its enterprise-wide operations. However, the company faced challenges with its existing storage infrastructure, which was impacting batch processing times and potentially affecting operations.
The Solution
Clarks called on the IBM team to run an analysis of its storage needs using the Oracle Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) tool, which revealed that IBM FlashSystem storage could solve the company’s challenges. As a first step, Clarks deployed one IBM FlashSystem 840 solution configured as an operating system mirror alongside its existing storage infrastructure. By setting up the FlashSystem storage for preferred read, the company maximized performance for read operations, and saw an immediate impact on batch processing times. Next, the company implemented a second FlashSystem solution to support its SAP Business Warehouse system.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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