Scope of Work
Freight Management, ERP Implementation
Project Outcome
Cost-efficient stream of shipments and a significant savings for the company.
Ralph Lauren Corporation
Business Challenge
Ralph Lauren Corporation is a global leader in the design, marketing and distribution of premium lifestyle products in four categories: apparel, home, accessories and fragrances. Conigent was hired by Ralph Lauren Corporation to work with them on their Canada Wholesale Initiative.
The mission of the Canada Wholesale Initiative is to transition the Canadian wholesale customers from the existing US Wholesale organization to one which utilizes a 3rd party logistics warehouse in Toronto, Canada. This process required Ralph Lauren Corporation to establish a new, stand-alone company with permanent Canadian resident status. This new company is a customer-facing, and is responsible for basic business functions such as inventory and customer order management, shipping logistics, reporting, etc.
The 3rd party logistics provider is National Logistics Services (NLS), a fashion logistics provider, which owns and operates the Canadian-based warehouse. To run the business, the existing NLS ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics – Great Plains, is utilized.
Solution
Conigent’s role in this project was first to provide a financial business analyst to research and document all business requirements in the areas of Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cost Accounting, General Ledger, Tax and Treasury, and Freight Management. In order to do this, Conigent personnel were required to learn not only the Ralph Lauren Corporation business and their use of multiple ERP, financial, customer order and sourcing systems, but also the integrated third party companies and software they use to manage accounts payable, accounts receivable, and freight invoicing.
Once the business requirements were defined, Conigent provided the functional design of the Great Plains system, including file layouts, supporting documents, and integration mapping to third party software. Because the Canadian entity had not previously existed, Conigent was also responsible for configuring the general ledger, profit center and cost center structure, and mapping the structure to the transactions and subledgers within Great Plains.
Once the system had been configured, Conigent provided the test scripts and actual testing necessary to prepare the system for Go Live, as well as training the users in the use of the system and the defined processes.
Client Benefits
The benefit Ralph Lauren Corporation achieved is a more cost-efficient stream of shipments. Previously, significant duty fees were applied to the wholesale price of goods, due to shipments first coming in to the US and then distributed to Canadian customers, or being drop-shipped to customers, but still paying US duties into Canada. With the establishment of a legal Canadian entity, Ralph Lauren Corporation receives merchandise in bulk from vendors on Canadian soil, with the ensuing duty fees calculated at the landed cost rate. This constitutes a significant savings for the company.
