WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY FOR EFFICIENT STOCK TAKING AND INVENTORY Prepared by: Riad A. S. Abeid; IT Manager Blue Salon Group Doha-Qatar

Agenda Introduction Current infrastructure The problem The wireless solution Compression Benefits Conclusion

Executive Summary The IT department aligned its strategy with the business strategy, through the implementation of IT to drive the overall strategy. Information Technology is an enabling tool for our business to grow, its not our business IT contributes positively to the bottom line IT made business easier IT increased human resources capabilities

The Blue Salon Group Blue Salon started its operations in Qatar in 1981 as a retail department store and a distribution agency for several prestigious consumer products. Blue Salon now is a group, consisting of more than ten companies with different activities including distribution and retail, All these ten companies together have more than 38 outlets in Qatar excluding the main showroom which is about 5000 square meters, the biggest department store in Qatar employing more than 800 people and with a turnover of about US $70,000,000.00

Blue Salon WAN Infrastructure With over 38 remote locations and the main office, Blue Salon flaunts to be one of the biggest retailers and online inventory leaders in Qatar IT @Blue Salon plays a vital role in the support of the overall business of Retail and wholesale. The IT department has a strong software and Hardware & Networking divisions. Blue Salon has the following assets to its credit Domain Controllers Backup domain controllers Exchange Server ISA server Oracle (AIX) Database server Terminal Service enabled servers File/Print Server Fax server Antivirus Server

Blue Salon connects to the remote location by two methods: (method 1) 1- Locations with less than or up to 5 users connect through the Bundled Analog lines provided by the local Telecom and Internet Service provider Q-Tel. This connection is done using a router (Cisco 3700 series) at the main office which is a 40 channel BRI ISDN connection. The remote locations are connected through a Cisco 1700 series router with the Bundled Analog WIC2AM which connects two normal analog lines of 56kbps each, hence gaining a total bandwidth of approx 100kbps application usage, equivalent to the ISDN speed.

Blue Salon connects to the remote location by two methods: (method 2) 2- Locations with more than 6 users, usually in big malls with more than 6 or 7 outlets containing more 12 users connect through the MPLS (Multi Protocol Layered Switching), which is an IP/VPN connection managed and provided by Q-Tel. The MPLS structure is a bottle neck connection with detailed drawing given below The main connection is a 1Mbps line sharing its usage to the other 3 lines having a speed of 256kbps each

Blue Salon IP VPN Hyatt Plaza Royal Plaza The Mall City Centre Q-Tel 256kbps 1Mbps Blue Salon IP VPN IP/MPLS Network Q-Tel

The Problem Blue Salon with more than 38 retail outlets and around five of them being department stores have nearly 400,000 different items Manual stock taking for Blue Salon or any of the outlets took more than three months to complete. This period included the physical stock taking, data entry and data processing to get to the final variance result Since Blue Salon strictly follows the policy of non-stop daily operations at any cost, physical stock was taken after normal working hours, with about 40 teams of two Persons each in cases of the big stores For the smaller outlets, it used to take us more than 10 hours per store just for the physical counting This cost us our time, money and human resources There was a solution for this with the handheld barcode scanners. But this solution needed data uploading and downloading each and every time we needed to take stock and then generate the stock variance report

The Final Wireless solution Since we had computers as the point of sales machines in every outlet, i.e. from single counters to multiple counters in the department stores and the warehouses, we decided to utilize these for the stock taking purposes, whether it be the yearly or the perpetual stock taking We developed a program for taking stocks, as a part of our ERP that was able to read the item barcodes using wireless scanners (Bluetooth or RF technologies) connected to the PCs in each outlet These scanners could read and access each and every item barcode on the display shelves, and move it online to the ERP system directly at the same time. The results were very clear. We had saved on time, money and human resources

Comparison between the Manual & Wireless Technology Stock taking. COST Manual Wireless Money in US $ 4000 1200 Time 640 working hours 192 working hours Human Resources 40 Teams 12 Teams Result time 10 days On the spot

Benefits of Wireless solution Another big advantage we had with the wireless stock taking was during the perpetual stock taking time. The stock controller could get the final variance report in the same store as soon as the physical count was over, rather than to take the counts back to the back office for data upload, processing and result generation.

Provided better support for the business Conclusion From our experience using this method for inventory control made the stock controller’s and outlives easier and saved a lot of: TIME Lowered COST & Increased ACCURACY. Provided better support for the business