Convenience Down Under

When Aussies crave slurpees, Mars Bars or need their energy fix of Red Bull, just like Americans, they turn to 7-Eleven, the country's leading convenience store. 7-Eleven introduced the convenience store concept to Australia more than three decades ago and since then has provided the country with fast and friendly service. It serves 96 million customers a year and recently was named "2008 Franchisor of the Year" by the Franchise Council of Australia.  

With 370 franchised fuel and convenience stores throughout Australia, the convenience store retailer identified that it needed to strengthen its data analytics, reporting capabilities and improve transparency to franchisees.

7-Eleven Australia embarked on a major IT overhaul in 2007 that consisted of four phases. The first phase, an upgrade to SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) 6.0, was completed in May 2008.

7-Eleven leverages SAP ERP to achieve major re-engineering of its supply chain processes. The change moved more than 80 percent of merchandising and inventory replenishment decisions from store level  to a centralized, automated model. Franchisees at store level review and approve these replenishment orders to apply local tailoring before they are submitted electronically to supply partners.

Most recently, the C-Store chain went live with SAP Business Intelligence (BI) to improve its store level reporting. The business intelligence implementation is designed to increase the efficiency and profitability of both the company and the 7-Eleven franchisees by automating business processes, providing visibility and delivering analytic capability.

"The implementation of business intelligence is the latest step in a long and fruitful relationship between SAP and 7-Eleven Stores in Australia, which represents a strategic commitment for our organization," says Dennis Lewis, CIO, 7-Eleven. "One of the keys to the success of the SAP projects within 7-Eleven is that the projects and the outcomes are owned by the business areas to ensure alignment with strategic goals."

Approximately 140 merchandising, marketing, supply chain and operational managers are currently using SAP Business Intelligence to gain improved store level reporting.
"Our supply chain and merchandising processes deliver cost and management efficiencies at enterprise level while retaining store level decision making and control," says Lewis. "SAP provides us with one version of the truth across the entire operation.  SAP BI will provide the evidence and data that our people need to make more informed business decisions in a timelier manner."  

7-Eleven implemented SAP Business Intelligence in conjunction with SAP POS Data Manager (POSDM) and SAP Business Intelligence Accelerator.     

"SAP Business Intelligence will provide us with an enterprise wide reporting system to support improved decision making at head office and later at store level.  SAP has played a central role as a business enabler for 7-Eleven Stores since the initial implementation of SAP for Retail. SAP enables us to deliver transparency to our franchisees and is a fully integrated aspect of our business processes and therefore franchisee training programs at store level."       

The entire project is expected to be completed in 2011.