Keytree repositions Phillips-Van Heusen using SAP Technology

Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH) is one of the world’s leading fashion retailers and during the past 20 years has acquired premium brands Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and the Warnaco Group. PVH has annual revenues of US$8bn and like many global organisations has a need for close control of its procurement activities. To facilitate the control of non-merchandise procurement PVH and Keytree entered into a procurement focussed digital transformation project, providing transparent end to end procurement linking requestors, approvers and providers.

“The final delivery was made possible by using a smaller and focused team where quality and an understanding of the overall solution from everyone was critical to its success.”

Martin Dawe – Head of Delivery at Keytree

PVH wanted to revamp a range of procedures that would provide effective spend analysis, transparency of procurement spending and the improvement of Store Development Project cost control. The outcome would see the delivery of a commitment account model with purchase orders (PO’s) being the basis for all transactions with a three-way invoice matching process – featuring a new approval process and allowing access from mobile devices.

As a global fashion brand, PVH is very conscious of how they apply its branding throughout the organisation, and this includes software solutions for its staff. The solution, therefore, needed to deliver a consumer-grade User Interface (UI) representative of this brand philosophy – across multiple device types.

Project Casper – delivering change with Keytree

Keytree was the lead partner on Project Casper, which would see SAP technology replace the majority of its legacy systems, driven forward by a motivated team, featuring the best people from PVH alongside the experts from Keytree.

User experience was an integral part of the project as the aim was to have a consumer-grade UI rather than the standard out of the box SAP user experience. Previously, PVH managed all purchasing and project management in a mixture of spreadsheets and a custom Access Database system, which was intensively manual. Now requests for quotes is an automated process that pops into an external website for vendors, and as a consequence, manual steps are removed, and the whole process is now significantly easier.

PVH procurement ranges from IT systems to shop refurbishments, and it was challenging to get these to all operate in a single solution – alongside meeting tax requirements in each host country as the solution works across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

  • WBS Project Management – when building a new store, or refurbishing an existing outlet a complicated budgeting and supply process is required. To manage this process, Keytree utilised the new UI and implemented the SAP Project Management module to cover areas such as budget estimations, additional budget approval, time planning, purchasing shopping carts, RFQ’s and PO’s, stock allocations and financial reporting for RFQ’s. This approach also included support for quotes and milestone billing for Franchise and Concession customers and intercompany billing for Own and Operated stores.
  • Non-merchandise Store Re-ordering – once a store is open, the non-merchandise material must be re-stocked by either the warehouse and/or external vendors. The solution delivered a SAP best practice SRM and Sales and Distribution processes with integration to the suppliers.
  • Non-merchandise Purchasing – direct purchasing from vendors either for warehouse stock replenishment or Cost Centre was delivered using a web store catalogue purchasing concept, with integration to RFQ’s, Purchase Orders, Goods Receipting and Invoice Approval.
  • Warehouse and Inventory Management – MRP stock management with tight warehouse integration for inbound and outbound deliveries.
  • Vendor Management – external log in for vendors to view and respond to PO’s, enter shipping details and submit invoices and RFQ participation.
logo PVH

The Outcome

By replacing legacy systems with SAP, accessible through a consumer-grade UI, Keytree provided PVH with brand focused user interaction and reduced the overall solution support costs. The removal of legacy solutions also eliminated the cost of supporting existing complex interfaces, providing end users with enormous usability benefits including a single unified process and a reduction in the amount of work required.

Martin Dawe, Head of Delivery at Keytree commented: “The final delivery was made possible by using a smaller and focused team where quality and an understanding of the overall solution from everyone was critical to its success.”