Concept Group has leading positions on the Russian market of women's and children's clothes. It has over 2 300 employees, a developed franchise network, a large distribution center and over 9 million products sold annually. The company's structure includes a wholesale channel, about 300 offline stores and three online stores.
In 2015, Concept Group completed the implementation of a new Odyssey WMS warehouse solution. As a result of the project, the organization received a high-performance warehouse management system, optimized and streamlined management of internal logistics, and simplified the work of personnel. Odyssey WMS solution automated processes of the distribution center with the area exceeding 10 000 square meters, 16 meters high and equipped with six-level high shelves. The DC fulfills orders from retail and wholesale chains, franchise partners, as well as fulfillment tasks for its own e-commerce sites. Each day, the distribution center provides picking, labeling and shipping of 80,000 to 100,000 items: more than 12,000 unique items, about 800 to 1,500 orders, as well as shipping of 2,000 to 2,500 boxes.
This level of load on the Concept Group distribution center imposes high requirements for the organization of technical support for one of the key applications, as well as trade and IT equipment for operational cargo handling.
During the first few months of WMS-system operation, Concept Group used its own specialists to solve 24/7 support tasks and engaged Odyssey Consulting Group to solve WMS functionality development tasks. At the beginning of 2016 Concept Group management decided to switch from independent 24/7 WMS system support to Odyssey Care service.
Odyssey Care is a service for support and development of ERP-systems based on Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, IBM Cognos, as well as Odyssey WMS solution. Odyssey Care personalized set of services is based on the packages:
- Odyssey Hotline - 24/7/365 technical support,
- Advanced Care - new functionality development and implementation,
- Performance Care - system performance optimization services,
- ITSM 365 - cloud service desk support.
Odyssey Care service does not just take the task of organizing 24/7 technical support - it is a conveyor belt of high-quality execution of customer requests. Well-established business processes, strict adherence to deadlines, prescribed regulations and, at the same time, the work focused on the customer success are the reasons why our customers choose us, comments Sergey Sidorov, Odyssey Care Product Manager.
Concept Club experts have chosen Odyssey Hotline and Advanced Care packages that provide 24/7/365 support for warehouse management system users, as well as prompt solution of WMS-system functionality development issues. In this case the services are provided in accordance with the agreed quality parameters which are described in SLA (service level agreement). Odyssey Care has the additional advantage of transparency and controllability of costs, because Odyssey Hotline package has fixed cost, and development costs for new functionality of the system within the framework of Advanced Care are preliminary estimated and agreed upon with the Concept Club IT experts.
In the process of making the decision to move to outsourcing, we assessed the risk in detail: whether the "outsiders" can properly prioritize the processing and execution of direct requests from business users. Initially, after the inclusion of a new mechanism, the IT department closely monitored the communication of business and services Odyssey Consulting Group - there was some "adjustment". Now the entire process is a well-functioning mechanism, the IT-division only performs analysis "post factum". Sergey Sokolov, Head of Concept Group IT infrastructure department.
Support requests are processed using the Service Desk system, which allows client employees to see the current status, solution timeframe and complete work history for each request.
Sergey Sidorov
The Concept Group's management receives monthly reports on the quantity and quality of services provided. During the first 12 months of work with Odyssey Care, Concept Group has achieved the following results:
- The number of incidents decreased by almost 5 times
- Distribution center operations are not critically affected by incidents occurring during the system operation
- The percentage of meeting the SLA parameters is 98%
- Confidence in continuous operation of warehouse processes has appeared.
Most of the warehouses now operate around the clock. Unscheduled stoppages in the work of distribution centers create serious risks of reputational and material losses. Keeping our own departments that provide reliable support for users 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and timely development of the system functionality is usually too expensive and inefficient. That is why we have chosen Odyssey Care service that allows us to solve all these problems.
Alexey Morozov, IT Director of Concept Group
