IT infrastructure for a retail sector in India

1. Presented By
-Dhananjay Anumandla
- Shaunak Sontakke

2. Topics Covered
 Introduction
 IT Infrastructure for Big Bazaar
 Network Design
 Intranet Apps
 Internet Apps
 RFID for Big Bazaar
 SOA for Big Bazaar
 Cloud for Big Bazaar
 Grid Computing for Big Bazaar

3. Introduction
 Big Bazaar was launched in September, 2001
 Big Bazaar is a chain of hypermarket in India. As of
June 2, 2012 there are 214 stores across 90 cities and
towns in India covering around 16 million sq.ft. of
retail space. Big Bazaar is designed as an
agglomeration of bazaars or Indian markets with
clusters offering a wide range of merchandise
including fashion and apparels, food products, general
merchandise, furniture, electronics, books, fast food
and leisure and entertainment sections.
 Big Bazaar is part of Future Group, it was started
by Kishore Biyani, the Group CEO and Managing
Director of Pantaloon Retail India.

4. IT Infrastructure for Business
 Smarter software is the muscle behind IT solutions
for Big Bazaar
 Together with comprehensive technology and
cost-effective methodologies, help Big Bazaar
thrive in the fast-paced global economy and help
them to:
 Deliver a smarter shopping experience: Increase brand
equity, improve customer loyalty, and boost profits
 Build smarter operations: Retain the best employees,
increase productivity, and streamline processes
 Create smarter merchandising and supply networks:
Share information, synchronize activities, and work
more efficiently.

5. IT Infra projects for Business
Helps Communication: Communication within the
organization can be faster with the use of software like
Lotus Notes. Retail stores can also communicate with each
other and with the warehouses. This can be done 24 hours
a day and seven days a week. Electronic Data Interchange
(EDI) can also be used for communication with suppliers
and vendors.
Collection of Data: Data can be collected about consumers,
their purchases the frequency of their buying and the
typical basket size. This information helps the retailer
distinguish the customers who shops at his store frequently
and also reward them. For example information gathered
about a customer may reveal preferences for certain
brands; this may be used for further communication with
the customer regarding promotional offers etc.

6. Store
Warehouse
Store
Store
Warehouse
Datacenter
DR Datacenter
All Branches / Retail Stores
Web
Server
DNS
Server
Proxy
Server
Application
Server
Application
Server
Application
Server
Router
Firewall
Switch
Web
Server
DNS
Server
Proxy
Server
Application
Server
Application
Server
Application
Server
Router
Firewall
Switch
Leased lines
Leased lines
Leased lines
Leased lines
Private Cloud
Big Bazaar Network Design

7. Intranet and Applications
 Front end Applications for employees use like,
Billing software,
Stock/Inventory,
Sales
Mailing system
 These applications help management at each store in tracking
Stock of all products, procuring products when reached re-order
level to avoid stock out situations
 Also helps management in making Sales reports as and when
required like daily/weekly/monthly/yearly etc.
 These applications also helps higher management to track sales
based on each store at all locations across India, which helps
them to concentrate on stores/locations where there is high
profitability/growth etc.

8. Internet
A public website helps people
 aware of the Big Bazaar store,
 find store location
 know products available
 online purchase of products for home delivery
 give feedback

10. ITIL for Big Bazaar
 The Information Technology Infrastructure
Library (ITIL) is a set of practices for IT service
management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT
services with the needs of business
 ITIL describes procedures, tasks and checklists that
are not organization-specific, used by an organization
for establishing a minimum level of competency. It
allows the Big Bazaar to establish a baseline from
which it can plan, implement, and measure. It is used
to demonstrate compliance and to measure
improvement in IT Services.
 This ensures 24*7 hrs uptime of IT services,
minimizing any downtime required for any system or
IT service upgradation.

11. ITIL for Big Bazaar

12. RFID for Big Bazaar
 In 2005, Future Group Initiates the implementation of SAP and
pilots a RFID project at its central warehouse in Tarapur
 Largest RFID implementation mandate in Asia
 The investment in the RFID technology, close to Rs 200 crore,
will be made through Future Knowledge Services (FKS) (another
Future Group company).
 Almost 1 million Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) out of a total of 3
million will be tagged with RFID chips.
 The company has fixed a price band of Rs 400 and above for all
commodities which will be tagged over a period of one year.
 It will help the company to track inventory, automate billing and
reduce thefts

13. RFID Demo Video
Play

14. Benefits of RFID to Big Bazaar
 All pallets and boxes are having RFID. It helps checking material
has gone missing during the transport
 Auto checking of correct boxes into correct vehicles with the
help of RFID. Alarm users if wrong loading is done.
 Helps identification of product movement. Identify which
products moves faster on Friday or Wednesday
 Helps in calculating stocks
 16% reduction in product stockouts since adoption of RFID.
 RFID equipped shops are 63% more efficient in replenishing out-
of-stock items.
 Out-of-stock items are replenished 3 times faster with RFID.
 Cost of excess inventory was reduced by more than 10%

15. SOA for Big Bazaar
 SOA delivers measurable benefits in today’s demanding
retail environment
 Enables our retail outlets to quickly adopt more profitable
business models, such as SKU rationalization, revenue
optimization, self-serve kiosks, e-Commerce and
consumer-direct selling
 Supports the close integration of POS, store portals, labour
management systems, RFID, security and infrastructure
systems
 Reduces the cost, complexity and need for process oriented
software customization, while minimizing the cost of
subsequent integrations

16. SOA for Big Bazaar
 Encourages maximum reuse of business logic and
services across retail processes
 Supports an IT approach that cuts across silo
applications, supports closer integration with retail
trading partners and fosters more responsive,
optimized operations
 Provides true platform independence, scalability, reuse
and encapsulation to minimize impact of change,
standards, XML, etc

18. Cloud for Big Bazaar
 Mainly uses SAAS and IAAS

19. SAAS Solutions for Big Bazaar
 Merchandising
 Send exactly the right merchandise to the right store
 Track the status of all merchandise through shipping,
receiving, and distribution
 Allocate items directly to your stores using a fully integrated
Allocation and Replenishment module to balance both
merchandise plans and store-level sales activity.
 Store
 CRM
 Audit and Operations Management
 Planning
 Core Financials

21. Challenges overcome by Saas
 SOA and SaaS concepts allows major cost reduction to Big Bazaar
 Upfront investment - The cost of the central system is usually not
directly proportional to the number of stores, weighing more on small
or new chains.
 Deployment cost - Traditional software must be installed and
maintained by competent technicians travelling from store to store
with high cost and limited peak capacity. Also, remote maintenance
over the Internet is usually done one store at a time.
 Data-sharing difficulties - It is quite easy to share data with HQ, but
complex to do with third parties—such as independent logistics,
product catalogues, and market analysis—or when exchanging
customer data with other non-competing chains for joint-loyalty
programs.
 Cost of new software - feature implementation—The new feature,
even if already available, must be bought and deployed over some test
stores. If acceptable, the general deployment cannot be immediate.

22. Grid Computing for Big Bazaar

23. Grid Computing for Big Bazaar
 Enormous amount of data.
 To create intelligence from the data, huge processing power is required
 Need Business Analytics to understand, analyze and solve business
related issues
 Workload management and prioritization
 Governance of the entire IT environment
 Optimized performance across all business processes
 With grid computing and SAS applications, Business Analytics are
done faster, better and cheaper
 It distributes computing-intensive SAS application across hardware
resources across Big Bazaar
 Grid computing provides parallelization of Business Analytics job for
improved performance.