Inside A Retail "Heart Transplant"

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

September 2014 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

Groupe Dynamite committed 27 months, a consultant, and up to 60 associates to its Oracle overhaul.

Montreal-based Groupe Dynamite has been purveying hip, fast fashion since 1975, which was quite possibly before fast fashion was “a thing.” But as the company grew to 300 stores and its brand reach expanded to include the Garage, Dynamite, and Groupe Dynamite banners, it began feeling the systems pains that come with success.

Ian Booler, senior director business transformation and project management officer (PMO) at the company, says that by 2011, disparate flavors of a COBOL-based retail systems platform were causing rampant data duplication across banners, territories, and channels. The vaunted single view of the customer, of SKUs, of anything was an impossibility. “We pushed that system to its limits,” says Booler. “We’d find ourselves executing data purges in the middle of the Christmas season to ensure business intelligence (BI) reports were generating on time. We simply outgrew it.”