Arcadia implements CA Clarity PPM cloud-based system

03 May '11

4 min read

CA Technologies announced that Arcadia Group, the UK's largest privately-owned clothing retailer, has selected CA Clarity Project & Portfolio Manager (CA Clarity PPM) On-Demand; a web-based service that provides subscribers with access to project and portfolio management systems, delivering projects faster and in a consistent and predictable way, through increased IT agility and innovation. The solution will act as a single platform for managing all IT and eCommerce projects across Arcadia Group brands, including: Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Burton, Topman, Wallis, Evans, Dorothy Perkins and Outfit.

Before implementing CA Clarity PPM, the IT department had to manage up to 50 IT and eCommerce projects, such as supply chain projects and new product developments, through a collection of legacy systems and spreadsheets. This included a Notes based Timesheet System and various in-house built applications to control costs and resources.

This presented the company with three key challenges:

- difficult and time-consuming efforts for the IT team to control the cost and governance of each project
- lack of real-time visibility into IT projects across the Arcadia Group's different functions made it very difficult to plan for future projects across the group

- disparate systems, as well as a reliance on paper based reporting, made it very difficult for each Business Systems Manager to report the final status of each IT project

Andrew Clarke, Group IT Director at Arcadia Group said: “We chose the on-demand version of CA Clarity PPM to achieve a quick return-on-investment. The cloud-based solution shortened the deployment time for us, whilst lowering outgoing costs. This is helping us to realise the benefits of the new solution, across the entire Group's IT and eCommerce projects. CA Clarity PPM will now provide us with a centralised project management tool with increased visibility of projects across our 2,000+ stores and seven retail brands; improving resource planning and head office reporting.”

The new solution provides a centralised, electronic record of all projects, providing Arcadia Group with greater visibility of all IT initiatives across its entire business. For example, IT managers in each function can now use CA Clarity PPM timesheets to verify how long a team have spent working on individual activities that make up each project.

In the future, Arcadia Group expects to use this information to further aid resource management and improve budgeting and capacity planning across the business to ensure that projects are handled as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Tim Bisley, Vice President and General Manager, CA Technologies UK and Ireland said: “Increasing numbers of our customers are choosing CA Clarity PPM delivered as an on-demand, cloud-based software solution, to manage their critical IT processes, as it offers them the flexibility to seamlessly leverage additional capabilities as the organisation's PPM processes mature and expand. We are delighted to be working with such a great brand name and we look forward to supporting Arcadia Group with the roll-out of the solution to the BHS retail brand, which recently became part of Arcadia Group.”

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