Funding successful growth while retaining tight financial control is a significant challenge for businesses today. Fashion retailer Select, has seen the company expand dramatically over the past 20 years. The company focuses at the lower price end of the market, so key to the successful expansion process has been controlling costs to retain profit margins.
The implementation of integrated accounting and business management software, PS Financials, has enabled Select to double its retail outlets to over 200 while keeping costs down, without increasing staffing levels within the finance department. In addition, improved access to information is enabling the company to rapidly react to changes in market condition and drive the ongoing expansion.
The recent success of the 'pile it high' retailers demonstrates the market's current demand for lower priced fashion garments. One company that has successfully cornered this market over the last 20 years is Select. Founded in 1983, Select Retail focuses on delivering women's fashion to the younger market. Its success in delivering high fashion at affordable prices.
Select remains a private company and, with product margins small, cost control is a fundamental element of its success. To support its expansion policy the company decided to undertake a major overhaul of its IT infrastructure, opting to replace financials, merchandising, POS and human resources systems.
As Robin Nadarajah, Financial Controller, Select, explains, the existing financial software was piecemeal. "There was no integration between systems - the stores literally had to telephone head office each night with the sales figures which we then input manually. It took weeks to produce management accounts - they were not available until seven weeks after month end. In a cut throat, price sensitive business, especially one that is expanding fast, that level of information access was simply not good enough."
In addition, Nadarajah was faced with a rapidly expanding finance team to support Select's expansion programme - a cost that the company was keen to avoid.
Select reviewed the market looking for a Windows based financial application with the flexibility to support its specific accounting processes. As Nadarajah explains, "We have a three ledger approach: Trade, which includes clothing manufacture; Sundry expenses and Overheads, which includes shop rentals and rates. We wanted an integrated solution without compromising our existing, proven, business processes."
Having reviewed the market, Select opted for PS Financials, an integrated suite of accounting, purchase order, sales order processing and stock control applications, designed around a single database - unified ledger - to provide immediate access to data.
While the unified ledger was a key element in the decision making process, Nadarajah was also impressed with the software's drill down functionality which enables a user to track a figure right back to transaction level.
Costs that are queried on a management report, for example, can be easily investigated as the drill down facility gives simple access to source documents. In addition, PS Financials' User Defined Interface (UDI) enables the company to design simple screen layouts to its individual specific requirements, which further improves its ease-of-use.
The software was implemented within a matter of weeks, in a process that went extremely smoothly, according to Select. Nadarajah says, "PS Financials' consultants demonstrated an excellent understanding of the retail business and rapidly set up the software, including UDIs, to meet our working practices."
"Since the implementation of PS Financials, Select has doubled its retail outlets, without having to increase the finance department personnel," says Nadarajah. It has also enabled the company to cope with the increasing numbers, and complexity, of suppliers. Says Nadarajah, "One of the benefits of PS Financials is its flexibility. We run a range of discount schemes and payment terms which PS Financials easily supports and we can now immediately answer suppliers' questions about accounts which has improved our business relationships."
Simple screens have also proved beneficial, with staff rapidly becoming productive. As Nadarajah explains, "We are based in Watford and recruiting staff in this area of low unemployment can be difficult. The ease of use of PS Financials and its transparency of operation within finance has supported flexible working practices and enabled Select to offer part time working, which has been excellent."
Since implementing PS Financials, Nadarajah highlights that the production of management accounts has been transformed. "In the past, it was a nightmare process of pulling information from many different sources and, eventually, creating the management accounts.
With PS Financials that process now takes only a day, as opposed a couple of weeks, which is a vast improvement."
The benefit of early access to information came when dreadful flooding across the UK had a terrible impact on fashion retailers. Rapid analysis of sales figures in affected regions enabled Select to instigate appropriate policies to allay losses. Nadarajah says, "Without the information from PS Financials, we would not have known the impact of the weather on our sales early enough. That information played a fundamental role in Select's rapid response to the situation and saved us money."
Information is also loaded into Excel and sent via email across Select, from management to marketing - where sales information is compared with external data, such as weather, to track performance.
Indeed, the ease of access to information and specifically, the drill down functionality has eased the audit process for Select's auditors. This has enabled the auditors to reduce their audit team by two thirds and speed up the production of Select's audit.
Nadarajah concludes, "Select is a rapidly expanding company in a fast changing, highly competitive industry where pricing models are paramount. It is vital that we keep a very tight control over all costs whilst implementing the efficient processes required by our partners and suppliers. The adoption of PS Financials has played a key role in Select's successful expansion to date and will continue to do so as we look to add further retail outlets." | 
