Major fashion retailer leverages SAP process automation to transform finance function, streamline data-intensive processes, and fuel more confident business decisions

Precisely, the global leader in data integrity, today announced that Etam Group, a major international retailer and leading lingerie brand in France, has implemented its Automate Studio solution across all subsidiaries to support company-wide accounts payable processes. By providing seamless SAP data access to decision-makers in real-time, Automate Studio (formerly Winshuttle Studio) enables Etam’s accounting teams to work autonomously without support from IT personnel, reduce operational costs, and drive greater innovation across the organization.

Business agility is critical in the retail industry, with companies seeking to balance tight margins with the need to innovate and stay competitive. With more pressure than ever to optimize margins through existing operating structures and processes, it comes as no surprise that automation has emerged as a top consideration for retailers in 2024. Retail companies are increasingly seeing the need to simplify and accelerate processes across their major functions to drive business efficiencies, improve customer experience, and stay compliant with an ever-changing regulatory landscape.

“In the retail sector, businesses must stay agile and be able to implement ideas quickly, something which is also incredibly important in accounting,” said Stéphane Delattre, Vice President – Accounting for Europe at Etam Group. “Automate Studio increases our productivity and efficiency, enabling mass data simplification and empowering decision-makers to access trustworthy data in real-time. We call it the ‘miracle product’!”

The Etam Group has an impressive history of driving innovation to optimize infrastructure and provide great customer experience – having invented the concept of just-in-time automatic restocking in 1965. But with presence now in over 1,500 stores located across 57 countries, the retailer needed a solution that would work with its SAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) software and support all the company’s subsidiaries in streamlining their data management.

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Automate Studio is the premier Excel-to-SAP solutions platform that enables business users to automate complex SAP business processes and make mass data changes quickly and easily. The platform allows customers to eliminate manual data entries and upload and download SAP data in record time, while simultaneously improving data quality. Automate Studio empowers business teams by reducing their reliance on IT support for automating Excel to SAP processes. Now citizen developers within business teams can create and manage their own solutions faster, while ensuring compliance and security standards are maintained.

“Before we deployed Automate Studio, we manually handled hundreds of invoices a month which could be very time-consuming,” said Delattre. “This practical solution from Precisely has not only increased our internal productivity but has helped us save time. Previously, one invoice took three minutes to create and now Automate Studio facilitates the creation of nearly 600 invoices within 15 minutes. Another example is how drastically it reduced the time needed to add purchasing conditions to orders in SAP – this used to take two days but can now be completed in just two hours.”

“Precisely is committed to helping customers automate their SAP processes to maintain agility, accelerate speed of business, and build the integrity of their data,” said Pat McCarthy, Chief Revenue Officer at Precisely. “As more organizations embark on digital transformation across their core functions, they are realizing the power of process automation, fueled by accurate, consistent, and contextual data to help ensure success.”

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