CASE STUDY: BrightHouse puts WMS through its paces

BrightHouse is the UK's leading rent-to-own retailer, providing quality branded home electronics, domestic appliances and household furniture to customers on weekly payments.

PMC has been providing both functional and non-functional testing services to BrightHouse since 2009 and has an established track record of successful testing service delivery. PMC were asked by BrightHouse to provide testing services for their Microsoft Dynamics AX Warehouse Management System. 

The Challenge

The legacy Warehouse Management System in BrightHouse was:

1) not capable of interfacing with the Finance AX module

2) not able to interface with any other application

3) not able to meet the requirements for the IT Strategy

BrightHouse had already replaced their existing Finance systems with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Finance Module which was being used to order and receipt stock into the National Distribution Centre (NDC). The implementation of the Supply Chain Module of AX allows BrightHouse to manage their stock across their entire estate (NDC, Local Distribution Centres and stores). BrightHouse required specialist AX testing knowledge and capability combined with BrightHouse business process and existing applications knowledge to support the testing and implementation of this solution to ensure that their end to end processes continued to work and that their business was not impacted by the implementation.

The PMC solution

PMC provided onshore and offshore testing resource to work with BrightHouse to plan the Test Approach and schedule of testing. We supplied Test Analysts to create Test Scripts ensuring that all business requirements and processes were covered and tests could be traced back to those requirements and processes. In addition, we provided Test Analysts with experience of the BrightHouse front end application (IRIS) to write and execute tests relating to integrating the front end system to AX via a new middleware layer. This testing was supported by a PMC Test Manager who worked closely with all third party suppliers to ensure that all defects were followed through to resolution and providing daily reporting. A PMC Senior Test Manager was also in place to provide Stakeholder Management, governance and to manage all resourcing and budget requirements.

 

Benefits

• PMC provided configured Test Management tools to ensure reusability of scripts and a standardised defect management workflow

• The use of qualified and experienced testing resource meant that BrightHouse had the confidence in the quality of their End to End solution

• The standardised PMC Testing process is tried and tested meaning BrightHouse benefitted from efficiency and effectiveness of the testing

• The BrightHouse business could continue to transact on Day One post implementation

How was this successful?

PMC found a number of critical issues in the End to End solution and were able to work with BrightHouse and their third party suppliers to ensure that these defects were fixed and that the solution was retested afterwards. Our PMC Senior Test Manager flexed the Testing Team size regularly to meet the peaks and troughs throughout the project - our PMC resource is more flexible than hiring testing contractors.

Steve Lee, BrightHouse head of logistics and engineering, said: “ I have been in Logistics operations for over 25 years and on only a limited number of occasions has a system implementation been managed as well as this. Colleagues have continued to go home in the evening (not stay through the night to fix problems). Stores have continued to trade unimpeded (and store colleagues have also had normal days). Product has continued to move through the supply chain, and again colleagues have had normal days and are able to be interested in the system rather than cursing it!