The Client

Supermercados Grande, a departmental supermarket chain in Puerto Rico, started operations in the year 1969. At the time the company only had 200 square feet of property and $3,000 in capital. From that moment on the company started to grow based on a strategy that consisted of marketing efforts and also acquiring other supermarket chains that were in financial trouble which Grande was able to restructure effectively and turn them around into efficient operations. Today, Supermercados Grande owns over 30 supermarket locations around the island and over a million square feet of space including stores, main warehouse, and administrative offices. The chain generates annual sales well over USD$300 Million.

The Challenge

Supermercados Grande needed to renew its financial systems in order to automate all accounting processes, as well optimize its logistics processes within the main warehouse, from receiving products to dispatching to each location. It was necessary to implement an inventory system which could optimize inventory levels, for improving the dispatching to each location as well as making procurement efforts more efficient. All these modules needed to be tightly integrated in order to achieve significant operational improvements, as well as being able to share key business information among the different areas of the organization.

The Solution

In response to the needs of Supermercados Grande, Solusoft decided to offer the Oracle ERP solution named E-Business Suite. This world class ERP solution is a market leader which consists of all necessary modules for achieving automation throughout the entire supermarket operation. The Solusoft team started by re-designing the financial accounting system, as the foundation for adding other modules such as procurement, inventory, logistics, and business intelligence. The entire project, which was implemented by Solusoft using an accelerated Oracle methodology, lasted a total of 6 months. This accelerated methodology allowed Supermercados Grande to reduce “go live” or “go to market time” significantly which consequently represented a faster ROI on their investment.

The Results

This project allowed Supermercados Grande to achieve operational improvements thanks to the automation of key business processes with the use of Oracle E-Business Suite. Today, Supermercados Grande has accomplished a complete integration from its back-office to its logistics operation in the warehouse making it possible for the information to flow seamlessly from procurement, to inventory, and ultimately to the General Ledger. This level of integration has allowed them to obtain information in real time for more accurate decision making and thus create a more efficient operation as a whole.