Concept Group constructed infrastructure on solutions of IBM

In December, 2014 the Concept Group company and IBM announced project completion on creation of the infrastructure allowing to accelerate productive and logistic activity of Concept Club several times and also to provide high data processing rate at increase in the future in loading three times.

Concept Group began the activity in Russia in 2004. The company diversified business, working with several commodity groups and brands in the retail and wholesale markets. Today Concept Group is the large company on steadily developing Russian fashion the market. Own retail network of the company contains more than 170 shops, franchizing – more than 150 shops. There are three online stores and a wholesale channel of sales.

Growth of the company and plans of its guide to further expansion of retail network required the new software which full-fledged work could be ensured only on condition of deployment of reliable, failsafe and effective infrastructure.

The project team of Concept Group considered solutions of different vendors. A choice was made for benefit of the equipment of IBM as the most corresponding to such parameters as scalability and reliability.

The new infrastructure solution allowed to ensure system operation of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) by means of which the full production cycle of development of a new collection of clothes is performed: from the idea and design to orders for factories, quality control and final delivery of ready-to-wear clothes to the distribution center of Concept Group.

"Currently new infrastructure allows us to provide the power of our distribution center of 6500 sq.m approximately in 120-130 thousand commodity units in change or 80,000 lines in orders that is a good indicator for networks of clothes with similar volumes of business. The solutions of IBM used for implementation of this project allowed us to construct easily scalable and effective infrastructure providing the continuity of our business", – Gumnitsky Stanislav, the CIO of Concept Group noted.

With emergence in the company of solutions of IBM the base for the current implementation projects of WMS and the ERP system is put. The scalability of the solution allows to expect also future projects on implementation of CRM and e-Commerce of platforms.

In addition, on new infrastructure the system providing financial and administrative activity of the company is unrolled.

"The example of the project implemented in Concept Club demonstrates that IT infrastructure needs to pay the closest attention. In the modern world of the company need such infrastructure solutions which allow to integrate the front - and the back office systems to make more weighed decisions. Correct organization of infrastructure helps to improve business efficiency, to cut down cash expenditures and energy consumption", – Rykova Elena, the representative on work with customers of IBM on the Northwest noted.

The newest solution of IBM designed based on IBM Flex System x240 and a complex of the data storage consisting of modern DWH the volume of 30 Tbyte IBM Storwize V7000 with a possibility of virtualization of external systems of storage, high-speed DWH on modules a flash memory IBM FlashSystem 840 which is used for minimization of response time for the most critical logical volumes of a system and also DWH of the initial IBM Storwize V3700 level with a capacity of 40 Tbyte is the basis for new infrastructure.

The project was implemented by the business partner of IBM – Ameta Pro company.