Nineteen Years on One Platform

Executive Summary

Most ERP case studies describe a go-live. This one describes what almost none can: what happens over the nineteen years after it. Bon-Ton Opticians, a New Delhi optical retail chain, implemented SAP Business One in 2007 — and within a year, the implementation earned the Jury’s Special Recognition at the SAP ACE Awards 2008, SAP’s celebration of solution-driven business excellence.

Bon-Ton runs on SAP Business One to this day. The original implementation predates TEKROI itself — it was delivered by a team that included TEKROI’s founder — and today Bon-Ton is serviced by TEKROI, the relationship having followed the people across nearly two decades. Few statements a software partner can make are stronger than this: the customer from 2007 is still a customer.

About Bon-Ton

Bon-Ton Opticians is a New Delhi-based optical retail chain, combining frames and sunglasses retail with made-to-prescription lens work — and one of India’s early adopters of SAP Business One in specialty retail.

The Challenge: Multi-Store Optical Retail Operations

In 2007, when most Indian retail chains ran on standalone billing software, Bon-Ton’s operations already demanded more:

• Retail plus prescription — every lens sale was a made-to-spec job travelling between store, lab and customer, beyond what billing software could track.
• Multi-store consistency — stock, pricing and offers had to hold across outlets without a shared system of record.
• Fashion-cycle inventory — frames and sunglasses turned with styles and seasons, demanding retail discipline in purchasing and stock.
• A business run on registers — consolidated performance across stores was assembled by hand, after the fact.

The Solution: SAP Business One for Retail

The 2007 implementation put SAP Business One at the core of the business — a decision that has outlasted three eras of technology since:

Retail Operations

• Store-wise inventory of frames, sunglasses, lenses and accessories on one system of record.

Prescription Workflow

• Made-to-prescription orders tracked from store to lab to delivery.

Purchasing & Finance

• Consolidated purchasing and store-wise books, with the chain’s performance readable as one business.

Continuity

• The platform has carried the business through upgrades and technology shifts since 2007 — with TEKROI as its service partner today.

Implementation Journey

TEKROI’s fixed-scope methodology took the project from assessment to go-live through eight stages: assessment, blueprint, configuration, customization, data migration, training, go-live and ongoing support.

Results

• Nineteen years, one platform — the 2007 decision still runs the business, through every shift in technology since.
• Recognition at the start — the implementation earned the Jury’s Special Recognition at the SAP ACE Awards 2008.
• Retail and lab on one record — prescription jobs and retail sales have shared a single system since before most chains had one at all.
• A relationship that outlasted companies — the customer has stayed with the people who implemented it, now at TEKROI.

Recognition — SAP ACE Awards 2008

Within a year of go-live, Bon-Ton Opticians received the Jury’s Special Recognition at the SAP ACE Awards 2008, SAP’s program celebrating solution-driven business excellence — an early, external validation that a specialty retail chain could run its whole operation on SAP Business One.

Why This Story Matters

Any partner can show a go-live; almost none can show 2007. Bon-Ton is proof of the thing buyers actually want to know — that the platform, and the people behind it, will still be there in year nineteen. For TEKROI, whose guiding principle is ‘never forget the customer,’ this is the story where the principle has a date on it.