Spice Newsletter update

NEWS LETTER ‘ ‘ SPICE World: Global Brands Scale their Operations Quickly A short timelines mandated to combines consulting expertise, brand that has seen parts involved and the usually speed-to-market. The platform initial success in resources, specialized technology ramp up and achieve targets. A Canada or the US is participating in such an by a brand’s management team sight now setting its short list of entities involved in & project management required for rapid continental expansion. This expansion includes third party to expand operations quickly and expansion usually means that logistics companies, successfully. Our teams are the management team is transportation providers, helping expand homegrown, taking more direct control of recruiters, real estate brokers, European & Asian brands into the brand locally, opening supply chain network designers, North America. SPICE is also physical stores in certain technology providers & launching new initiatives to markets, engaging in “Omni integrators and many more. expand our ecosystem of channel” commerce and Each of these entities has to be partners for helping Canadian establishing a more selected, integrated and and US brands access markets in substantive supply chain operationalized. China and India, with a particular network. Several operational focus on the emerging One Belt decisions have to be made Where does a management & One Road (B&R) opportunity carefully: from choosing the team commissioned with this across Asia. right logistics partners to objective, turn to? Do-it-yourself selecting the appropriate sites on a piecemeal basis, or engage SPICE World is a business for distribution centers and experts who can provide a one- platform that a brand can “plug- offices. This sales & distribution stop-shop solution? in” to a pre-connected network of expansion also requires several business service partners and important and complex SPICE manages over 2,000 information technology solutions technology-related global brands within its & providers. considerations such as: ERP, technology and business Continued on page 2 CRM, WMS, TMS, e-Commerce, network. Several of these bands EDI and Business Intelligence are growing their presence (build, buy, extend, integrate). within Canada and the US. WHATS SPICE World, a consulting INSIDE! These strategic, operational service and technology- and technology considerations enabled network, is rapidly SPICE DEBUT AT RCC…….. 3 require substantial time, effort becoming a one-stop-shop CONNECTED RETAIL …….. 4 & skilled project management. business accelerator platform There is an inherent degree of for brands that are looking for CLIENT SPOTLIGHT………….. 6 risk due to the various moving SCRUM PROJECT MANAtGEMENT ………….. 8 SPICE IBM SOFTWARE www.spicetg.com PRACTICE ………….. 8 REAL TIME ANALYTICS .. ………9

Continued from page 1 This ecosystem is designed Beyond consulting and project provides the visibility and to provide the technical and management, SPICE also business reporting required operational solutions that a provides pre -integrated by the management team to brand needs in order to technology with major North monitor success. expand from a modest American merchandise retailers, presence to a more automotive manufacturers and With SPICE World, growing substantial operation – other major buying organizations brands are receiving the help achieving speed-to-market allowing the brand to quickly they need to ensure that at a lower cost and with start operationalizing its achieve their objectives in a reduced risk. The eco-system wholesale business with the timely fashion and with the consists of specialized 3PL correct data flow and end-to-end right expertise. companies and visibility. The SPICE Connect and transportation organizations SPICE Catalog solutions within that are pre-integrated with the SPICE World platform provide SPICE. These logistics cloud data integration and global providers operate in catalog management solutions, specialized vertical markets while SPICE Trade provides a such as fashion, apparel, brand to rapidly enable B2B and footwear, sporting goods, B2C e-commerce without the CPG, pet products, building hassles. The solutions are supply, consumer electronics, rounded of with SPICE Insight, a industrial products, Managed Analytics platform that healthcare and many others. ABOUT NEEL SHARMA Neel has held senior roles at various technology firms and is currently a Partner at SPICE Technology Group, Inc. Neel is a well recognized technologist within the North American Manufacturing, Retail & Distribution sectors. Amongst the early pioneers in the “cloud” computing market, Neel has been working since the nineties with customers across the globe to achieve technology-driven, quick-time-to-market capabilities for modern commerce and complex supply chains. He brings expertise in digital commerce, supply chain, analytics and in emerging information technologies that are propelling organizations towards new business models. Some of these technologies and their modern applications include “Internet of Things (IoT),” “The API Economy,” “The Sharing Economy” and collectively: “Industry 4.0” Neel is the Program Chair & Board Member of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP – Toronto Roundtable). He is also the Chairperson of the Program Advisory Committee for Business Process Management at Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning.

SPICE MAKES DEBUT AT STORE 2016 S Group made its debut more. Calvin MacDonald Sephora’s pice Technology These speakers shared valuable CEO, also urged the Canadian insights on the state of Retailers to fully embrace at the Retail Council of Canada’s STORE 2016 next steps required to move to becoming irrelevant. event as an exhibitor. Canadian retail today and the technology or run the risk of next level, especially in terms of STORE is a two-day annual Technology. On the exhibition floor, Spice conference hosted by the was also involved in the Retail Council of Canada in One of the key takeaways from networking session where we Toronto with its main focus this event is the importance of showcased all our services and on Canadian retailers; leveraging and embracing solutions, with main focus on ranging from large to small technology especially in the Spice Live Board (visit here independent stores. Canadian Retail for more details) The 2016 edition was packed One of the speakers at the Drawing some traffic to our spot with a rich agenda including event stated how important it with giveaways and free keynote speakers from is for Canadian Retailers to chocolate, we were able to leading Canadian retailers. catch up to the U.S as we are introduce the retail industry to Some of the speakers currently behind by 5 years. “By Spice and also educate retailers included: Michael Medline, 2019, an estimated 10 percent on the solutions and services we President, CEO, Canadian of retail purchases will be offer and how we can help Tire; Marc Metrick; President, made online, up from 6 connect the numerous moving Saks Fifth Avenue; Calvin percent in 2014”- Forrester parts of their complex supply McDonald, President & CEO Research chain. Sephora Americas..and many Overall it was a wonderful experience and we were very excited to be a part of it. We thank the Retail Council of Canada for hosting such a great event and we look forward to more partnerships in the future! Written by: Joy Rotimi (Marketing Coordinator )

SELL MORE – CONNECTED RETAIL The ultimate goal of any due to increasingly easy access businesses is to Sell More. to information on products / Is your business ready to serve In the retail this is done services and competitor pricing. this connected customer? primarily through Through mobile devices, they have access to information To meet these • Increasing the number anywhere and anytime– “anywhere/anytime” seamless of customers and including while in-store expectations, retailers have huge shopping. This real-time access challenges to enable their • Increasing the share of allows customers to seamlessly organizations. their wallet your shop across channels as they New business processes, business obtains. traverse from awareness, to organizational structures and transaction, to delivery, to after technology are required on the This is becoming more sales care. Providing them the customer engagement side, difficult in this era of the freedom to shop anywhere at blurring of the lines between ultra-connected customer, anytime. the physical store and digital What does an Omni-channel supply chain look like? The Omni-channel supply chain will look different depending upon what capabilities a specific retail requires, but the basics concepts are the same: Network wide Seamless channel inventory visibility purchase and Speed and cost – returns effectiveness of enables customer to – delivery options. make decisions enables customers where to purchase. to decide when and where. world by the use of ibeacon, implement. This is due to the organization to secure the virtual changing rooms, virtual fact most retailers have run their resources and funds. Then, stores, popup stores, endless various selling channels in silos maintaining the focus and aisles, holograms, mobile apps, and have a myriad of commitment of the business mobile payments and so forth. disconnected legacy systems. To over the multiple years it takes to While determining and overcome these obstacles deliver; no small challenge in an implementing the right mix of requires a major multi-year industry where the supply chain customer engagement endeavor. This typically requires is generally viewed as a cost technology is absolutely organizational realignment, new center and not as a strategic necessary, it is all for nothing if business process, physical store / enabler. your supply chain is not Omni- distribution configuration channel ready. changes and major IT Getting Started enablement investments. The Challenge The first step is to articulate the The risk for supply chain Omni-channel supply chain The above concepts maybe practitioners is they need to strategy, which is fairly simple to understand, but are clearly articulate a supply chain straightforward. extremely difficult to capability strategy to sell to their

The difficult part is to channel, and business understand when specific leaders who are worried • Reserve online capabilities are required to about channel sales purchase in-store support the business cannibalization. evolution, in order to keep • Purchase in-store up with customer • Channel Inventory deliver to home expectations. Then the physically stored in different million- dollar question, “how distribution centers. • Deliver to lockers and long it will really take to 3 party solutions develop and deliver the • Channel perpetual capabilities?” inventory stored in different • Return via any channel regardless of IT legacy systems. purchase channel Regardless of the sequencing of the various • Inventory has channel capabilities the first specific internal product • Speed of delivery; foundation block is one pool codes and product Standard free of inventory. This is a huge hierarchies. delivery (3 to 5 days) strategic move that allows Premium delivery the supply chain to free up • As a result achieving one same day, next day, working capital through pool of inventory can be named day & time improved inventory very difficult and time optimization, but more consuming, so the sooner importantly it enables all the you start the better. The above illustrates a few other capabilities to ensure of the challenges for that inventory is available supply chain practitioners when and where the Capabilities to deliver an Omni- customer wants it. channel supply chain. The The capabilities that an Omni- major difference in this Surprisingly, a significant channel supply chain need to latest supply chain number of retailers still have support are well known; however, transformation is the separate store and e- how they are implemented will increased requirement for commerce inventories. I was need to be tailored to each IT enablement. The supply talking to a retailer the other retailer’s specific business model. chain either has a day that has 3 separate These capabilities include but are capability or does not – inventory pools (catalog, not limited to: muscling through with store and e-commerce people will not cut it. Moving to one pool of • Network wide inventory Is your supply chain ready? inventory can be challenging optimization of Customer due to: orders. • Organizational • Order online pickup in-store Structures: Inventory “owned” by each About the Author: Ian Rogers is an accomplished business leader with 20+ years in Retail / Supply Chain Management, Portfolio, Program, and Project Management. Ian’s expertise comes from working in multiple countries (Canada, UK, US, China) and in multiple sectors including manufacturing and multi- channel retail (office products, mass merchandising, lifestyle brands). Over the years Ian has worked with companies as both a senior line leader and as a management consultant in Supply Chain and IT. This broad based experience provides him with the ability to take a holistic view, thereby understanding the potential impact changes in one area of the business will have on other areas.

CLIENT SPOTLIGHT: REMCO REMCO was approached by Spice in 2014 for their integration needs with end clients. Since then, it has been a great working relationship among both organizations. Remco is a warehousing and transportation company with its headquarters in Montreal. The organization started over 60 years ago in Montreal, where the owner’s father was asked by a friend to help move freight as a favor. He agreed and rented a truck to help move merchandise around. After doing this a couple of times and realized he was getting more and more of the same request for free, he decided to turn it into a business. He rented more trucks, and the business began to grow. From a small local business in Montreal, Remco grew province- wide and finally became a nationwide organization with warehouses in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. with Ruben Moosun, Director IT, “Remco today, has grown considerably that you can find them REMCO across every mall in Canada at least once a day” said Ruben Remco specializes in the apparel business, and most of their clients are in that industry. With their clients ranging “Here at Remco, we shield our customers from the pain and SPICE and Remco takes on the complexities” from large recognizable brands “ such as PVH, Adidas, Burberry, into our customer’s internal Forever 21; to small independent “What we are doing at Remco system.” He said. retailers. however, is to apply technology to every stage of our business in Asides transportation and As for future plans to expand into terms of visibility and warehousing, Remco sets itself other industries, Ruben information on product apart from the rest of the pack mentioned some consideration is movement.” by providing “Value Added being given to possible extension Services” based on the unique to the food industry. “To stay ahead of the curve, needs and requests of their Acknowledging the complexities it information is provided to our clients. Requests like price brings, in comparison to apparel, customers from when it arrives ticketing, removing and Ruben is excited and definitely at our warehouse, till it is replacing labels, knitting and looking forward to the challenge. delivered to the backroom of sewing damaged items, the stores. This is either provided hanging and many more Like most businesses, there are through our portal or fed directly services are only few of the challenges facing the many services Remco provides transportation industry today. One to their clients. of which is competition. Because special skills are not required to Remco is also focused on get into trucking or warehousing, making improvements to their customers can get heavily business processes while discounted services from owner reducing the costs passed on operators making it difficult for to their customers at the same large corporations to compete. time. One of the ways this was

achieved was by partnering with the past year and there has SPICE for their integration needs. On discussing the improvements been no down with time. Remco has seen after signing up With SPICE, Remco was able to with SPICE, Ruben mentioned the do a couple of things; reduce IT level of confidence in SPICE is costs by outsourcing the complex unmatched. integration process thus giving their IT department room to “We know that 24/7 we have focus on things that they are support from Spice. We just do not really good at like transportation have an individual, but we have an and logistics. organization. Before we were heavily dependent on individuals; “Our clients now believe that and if the person was away or In conclusion, Ruben said integration is very simple, and leaves the organization, there is a “Based on the integration may not understand the big gap that most times cannot experience, cultural fit and complexities that go on behind be left unreplaced for too long. personal relationships with the scenes” Now we can be at ease knowing people at SPICE, we would that our issues are handled by an recommend SPICE to our A key example was, one of their organization and not just an clients. They understand our clients Suit Supply based out of individual” he said. business challenges, and Amsterdam. This company understood what we were creates high quality custom suits, Spice is now able to help control looking for. The fit and feel of shirts and pants for men. They Remco’s customer volume and both companies work well came to Remco while in the now that they have an together and I will definitely midst of an e-commerce organization handling integration, recommend them to others.” expansion to Canada with no they are able to take on high experience using a 3PL. This volume projects and focus more Written by: expansion project included some on providing other services to their Joy Rotimi integration of some documents clients.” (Marketing Coordinator ) to their Canadian ERP which Spice took on, the project was One of the key strength he sees in successfully completed and Suit SPICE as an organization is the Supply has decided to adapt the same high quality customer same process to all other service has been maintained over locations around the world.

SPICE IBM Software Practice D igital innovators harness guarantee security at every four imperatives: point of interaction –from technology to dramatically change the ecosystems to your data way they deliver client transactions across your • Analytics-based visibility experience, or the way they center and everything in and decision support operate – or both. They between? across all operational data outperform their peers on key helps leaders make the business metrics like share of • Seamless portability – can you right decisions at the right wallet and new product rapidly iterate new time, at the pace of digital development success. applications and run them in business Unleashing digital innovation the best place for optimal requires an ambidextrous way of performance, on any • An application platform working - it’s not simply about infrastructure, anywhere? designed for hybrid cloud building the next killer app. and on-premise IT allows • Unprecedented scalability – rapid iteration and To truly differentiate and can your technology deployment of harness mobile, data and the dynamically and applications on any internet of things for automatically adapt to the infrastructure. competitive advantage, demands your new enterprises need to be able to innovations place on them? • Process management and open up their core systems to integration tools designed rapid digital innovation without • Complete visibility – are you for the API economy compromising security or able to get insight into the allows reinvention of governance. things that matter for your processes across business, in real-time? ecosystems, seamlessly Bridging the world of traditional and securely enterprise operations and SPICE Technology Group’s ecosystem-based digital Partnership with IBM enables us to • Advanced analytics deliver innovation is not trivial. How deliver Security, Portability, adaptive and compelling does your technology Scalability and Visibility across content to clients and foundation perform on these traditional IT and digital employees across all must-have criteria…? ecosystems. channels of interaction. Written by • Security – are you able to SPICE help’s our clients achieve Rad Dockery, Business Development Executive SCRUM PROJECT MANAGEMENT Use Scrum Project Management to Deliver Working Products with More Business Value; Growing Trend Scrum Project Management v/s Traditional Waterfall In Scrum project tasks are divided in short sprints, this iterative cycle can be repeated until enough work items have been completed, the budget is depleted or a deadline arrives. Project impetus is maintained, and when the project ends Scrum ensures that the most valuable work has been completed. This contrasts sharply to the more traditional waterfall style approach that fixes the project scope upfront, requiring the extensive creation of requirements, analysis and design documentation before development can get started. Delays and budget overruns are common, and the failure to prioritize the feature set often results in low quality products that are overloaded with features that the customer/user does not actually require. Benefits of Scrum Project Management The Scrum approach to project management enables software development organizations to prioritize the work that matters most and break it down into manageable chunks. Scrum is about collaborating and communicating both with the people who are doing the work and the people who need the work done. It’s about delivering often and responding to feedback, increasing business value by ensuring that customers get what they actually want. Shifting from traditional project management approaches to Scrum project management requires an adjustment in terms of the activities that are carried out, the artifacts that are created and the roles within the project team.

Real-Time Analytics in the Retail Space and Beyond With the world of e-commerce fast logic into the database itself. becoming the future of retail sales, finding a way to utilize all of the • Data Warehouse Appliances are combination available sources of data out there, with hardware and software products designed specifically a real-time, dynamic analytics can for analytical processing. An appliance allows the definitely be a challenge for any retailer. purchaser to deploy a high-performance data warehouse right out of the box. Real-time analytics uses all available internal and external data resources • In-Memory Analytics is an approach to querying data when they are required. It consists of when it resides in Random Access Memory (RAM), dynamic analysis and reporting, based verses querying data that is stored on physical disks. on data entered into an enterprise system, and/or provided through • (MPP) Massively Parallel Programming is the various online data sources. coordinated processing of a program by multiple processors that work on different parts of the Below are some examples of program, with each processor using its own operating technologies that support real-time system and memory. analytics: Using a combination of analytics tools to mine social • (PIM) Processing in Memory is a media, such as IBM’s Watson, along with Google analytics chip architecture in which the and reporting tools like Tableau, which offers dynamic processor is integrated into a reporting, utilizing API’s, are helping retailer’s optimize memory chip to reduce latency. customer interactions quicker and more effective than ever thought possible. It can help businesses learn how to • (API) Application Program overcome the inevitable privacy and integration challenges Interface is a set of routines, that they may have encountered in the past. protocols, and tools for building software applications. The API The use of real-time analysis can give the retailer up-to-the- specifies how software minute information regarding their customers and present components should interact and it so that faster and smarter business decisions can be APIs are used when programming made -possibly even during the time span of a customer Graphical User Interface (GUI) interaction. Real-time analytics could be capable of components. instantly refreshing a retailer’s dashboards to reflect business changes throughout the day. • In-Database Analytics is a Written by technology that allows data Don Barnetson processing to be conducted within (BI Developer Spice Technology Group) the database by building analytic

NEW OFFICE ALERT! We are pleased to announce the opening of our new U.S. office in Houston, Texas. This office will serve as the operational center for our upper midsize and large enterprise businesses in the U.S. This important milestone signals our commitment to increase our presence in the US market where we have been servicing companies since 2011. We are thrilled about this continuous growth but it's important to point out that this expansion has been driven largely by market forces. Companies with complex supply chains are demanding more and more IT services and solutions to modernize their processes and systems to compete in a fast pace environment. We are fortunate to be part of their success and look forward to service existing and new clients. Welcome some of our NEW CLIENTS (January 2016 till Date)

PICTURES FROM: Retail Council of Canada’s STORE 2016