Solution brief Major U.S retailer leverages AWS and Insight to keep clothes on the shelf
The cloud unlocks improved business processes in the highly competitive retail industry.
By Insight Editor / 23 Dec 2019
The Challenge
Remaining competitive in the retail industry is no longer a luxury, but a requirement for remaining relevant in a crowded market. Over the last decade, the retail industry has seen tremendous changes, with new market leaders emerging, historical giants fading and technology driving new ways of doing business. In addition to these industry shifts, the retail segment has witnessed consistent year over year growth of 5%, which adds to pressures for businesses to keep ahead of demand. These critical factors continue to push retailers to be more creative and innovative in their mission to provide the best experience for their customers.
Forman Mills, a retail chain of 41 stores, has grown from its humble beginnings in 1977 selling apparel in local flea markets to a fast-growing major retailer of apparel, spanning several states in the Northeastern United States. In their pursuit to provide for their customers, Forman Mills recognized a significant need to improve IT and infrastructure in order to better serve business processes. Specifically, aging legacy infrastructure systems were causing disruptions in inventory, accounting, marketing and other business processes.
The Solution
The executive team of Foreman Mills knew that if they were to remain competitive in today’s marketplace, they needed to upgrade their systems to modern technology. They decided to leverage the power of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud to take advantage of its high availability and scalability, as well as cost savings from eliminating the need to upgrade on- premises hardware. Upon selecting AWS as their preferred cloud platform, Foreman Mills also selected Insight's professional services team to assess their platform upgrade.
Insight started with a deployment and businesses processes assessment, which determined that it was time to upgrade their legacy systems and take advantage of the full set of features and benefits of hosting their infrastructure in the AWS platform. Taking advantage of AWS’s capabilities, Insight was also able to consult and architect an AWS shared services file repository to upload content and product specifics to Foreman Mills’s platform, further enhancing the ability of Forman Mills's supply chain and marketing reach. Insight also continues to assist Foreman Mills to realize cost savings by moving to a Just-In-Time inventory system from a legacy long term stocking inventory system.
The Results
As a result of the combined power of AWS and Insight, Forman Mills now has the blueprint to deploy a secure, well-architected AWS environment. Along with this, Insight delivered Forman Mills a monthly cost savings of over 50%, with improved availability and more efficient operations. Forman Mills continues to use Insight's qualified AWS team for monthly cadence calls and continued support. These improvements set Forman Mills up for further success as they plan their operational expansion for the new year.
