Grocery Retailing Process Overview

Enterprise Retail Management Solution Engineered by CIBER Powered by SAP

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Grocery Retailing Process Overview

INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................1 NOVARETAIL FOR GROCERY ...................................................................................................2 CATEGORY MANAGEMENT ......................................................................................................1 MERCHANDISE AND ASSORTMENT PLANNING ...................................................................... 1 RETAIL PRICING AND REVENUE MANAGEMENT .................................................................... 1 PROMOTION PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT ......................................................................... 2 ASSORTMENT MANAGEMENT .............................................................................................. 2 SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING ......................................................................................................3 FORECASTING AND REPLENISHMENT................................................................................... 3 PERISHABLES PLANNING ................................................................................................... 4 PURCHASING .........................................................................................................................5 VENDOR RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT ............................................................................... 5 PURCHASE ORDER MANAGEMENT ...................................................................................... 6 SUPPLY CHAIN EXECUTION ....................................................................................................8 INVENTORY MANAGEMENT ................................................................................................. 8 WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT ............................................................................................. 10 NOVARETAIL ENHANCEMENTS .......................................................................................... 11 MULTI-CHANNEL RETAILING .................................................................................................12 STORE MERCHANDISE MANAGEMENT ............................................................................... 12 STORE CONNECTIVITY ..................................................................................................... 12 ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT ............................................................................13 MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT .......................................................................................... 13 FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING .................................................................................................. 14 MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING ............................................................................................ 16 FINANCIAL SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT.......................................................................... 17 GENERAL FEATURES ...........................................................................................................17 AUTHORIZATION .............................................................................................................. 17 ACCOUNT DETERMINATION ............................................................................................... 17 SCHEDULE MANAGER (MONTH END ACTIVITIES) ................................................................ 18 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (REPORTING) ............................................................................. 18

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Introduction
Working in close partnership with SAP and our retail clients, CIBER are proud to present novaRetail, an integrated enterprise Retail Management Solution, engineered by CIBER and powered by SAP. novaRetail is the enterprise management system you can rely on to run your business.

All retail organisations face similar challenges:

Our company is growing rapidly. We need to make sure we have a business solution in place to support growth and expansion. Our margins are so tightly managed that we really need to have goods control on managing costs throughout the value chain. In the retail industry some trends come and go very quickly. We need business intelligence to identify, analyse and resolve market changes quickly. We need a business platform which allows us to be ahead of our competitors.

Built on the success of our customers, our retail and information technology expertise allow us to deliver a high quality solution more efficiently with a higher return on investment. Some of the features of novaRetail include:

User friendly master data management Superior category business planning and management Powerful merchandise planning and management Strategic retail price planning and management Innovative promotion planning and management Complex replenishment and allocation planning Advanced purchase planning and management Effective inventory and warehouse management Informative business analytics and intelligence

This document describes the full suite of functionality contained in the novaRetail solution.

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novaRetail for Grocery

Whether you have a chain of Hypermarkets, Supermarkets, Convenience stores or any combination thereof, novaRetail has built-in specific solutions for the Grocery industry.

Category Management gives you the ability to plan and manage categories of products at different levels from major departments right down to the individual article level. Given the diverse range of products in modern supermarkets from the typical dry goods, through to fresh produce, general merchandise and liquor the category management functionality will give your team the ability to monitor stocks and margins and make informed decisions about prices and promotions.

Supply Chain Planning introduces automatic replenishment which brings the benefit of managing daily replenishment more efficiently for the large number of articles typically found in grocery stores. This will also reduce human error such as ordering the wrong product or not ordering at all.

Sales will increase due to more efficient stocking processes through frequent deliveries, higher selling space productivity due to fewer out of stocks and a reduction in in-store storage space required for safety stock buffers.

Special processes are built in to support the demanding task of replenishment planning for perishables. novaRetail can also deal with inventory on a quantity and value basis for dry goods whilst managing fresh produce on a value only basis.

Purchasing functionality will allow you to manage the all important relationships with your vendors whether they deliver to the distribution centre, direct store delivery or by a vendor fill process. From monitoring on-time delivery to reconciliation and settlement of vendor rebates the purchasing functions will give you complete control over the procurement of stock into distribution centres and stores.

Supply Chain management will give you the ability to track inventory as it moves through the supply chain from vendor to distribution centre to store to customer. Detailed information of

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-3each inventory movement will give inventory planners the information they need to ensure customer service levels are maintained at the highest level. Special enhancements in the novaRetail solution give you the ability to carry out inventory transactions with the latest technology such as wireless hand held terminals.

Finally, Multi-Channel retailing takes care of the critical area of store operations. Seamless integration of store systems into the merchandising system will ensure that all stakeholders are viewing the same information about stock and sales. Underpinning the entire solution is the Enterprise Management and Support functions. The all important Financial Management of your organisation is provided by tight integration with all merchandising and supply chain activities. As soon as a transaction is carried out in the operative system the financial records are updated

In short novaRetail for grocery is a fully integrated, enterprise-class Retail Management Solution specifically designed for the entire operations of Retail organisations from store operations, supply chain planning and execution, purchasing and merchandising to enterprise management.

The diagram below illustrates the breadth of functionality provided by novaRetail across the retail value chain from vendor to customer.

novaRetail across the Retail Value Chain

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Category Management
MERCHANDISE AND ASSORTMENT PLANNING
Merchandise and Assortment Planning (MAP) supports planning and reporting for all business activities involving assortment and merchandise, as a smoothly integrated process. This enables you to plan on a value and quantity basis, on any level you choose, within a planning hierarchy. For example, planning can be done at purchasing organization, store group, or merchandise

category level. You define for example, your strategic targets at a higher hierarchy level, and then transfer them step-by-step to the more detailed assortment, price band or even article. While doing so, you can compare various plan versions that were created manually and then develop a final version based on these plan versions. The plan is used to establish important key figures such as sales, gross margin and stock for a time period in the future, for example, for a season. By comparing planning data, actual data, and historical data, you can plan future business developments in the best possible way.

RETAIL PRICING AND REVENUE MANAGEMENT

novaRetails powerful pricing techniques are used to realize pricing elements, such as purchase price, mark ups and promotion discounts. All relevant pricing elements are predefined and easy to maintain according to the retail specific business needs. The feature price points, gives the option for automatically rounding to psychological prices (e.g. 1.99) based on a pre-defined logic.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Calculation of sales prices based on mark-up or margin Price calculation stored in system as a pricing document The ability to include warehouse transfer prices in a two-step calculation Pricing calculation simulation across a range of articles in a merchandise category Inclusion of competitor pricing information in sales price calculation

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-2 Integrated markdown planning

PROMOTION PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

Promotions are one of most important features used in the retail industry to push your sales, win customers and clear your inventory of slow moving items. The novaRetail solution will open new possibilities for your company to carry out many kinds of promotions, such as buy-one-get-one-free, from promotion planning to promotion processing. In addition, the built-in reporting system (RIS Retail Info System) will establish evaluation on the success of a promotion, with regards to margins and quantities as well as articles and costs.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Promotion pricing created at multiple organisation levels, for example all stores or store specific Different validity periods for different groups of stores Automatic follow-on processing such as promotion announcement to stores and creation of allocation tables The ability to maintain promotion specific discounts across entire ranges or merchandise categories and link these to coupons Multiple deal types including Buy One Get One Free, Free Goods, Multi-deals based on quantity or value.

ASSORTMENT MANAGEMENT
novaRetails assortment (range) management tools give you the ability to manage individual ranges for groups of stores or even at a store level.

Once the parameters are defined at article and store level, for example article grades and relevant merchandise categories for each store the system will automatically assign the range to the stores. As article ranges are constantly changing in the grocery industry as new products are introduced and obsolete products deleted novaRetails discontinuation functions will take care of the remaining stock in your stores. Automated discontinuation checks will provide an overview of

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-3where deleted stock is sitting in the supply chain and allow you to take the appropriate action to remove it from your stores such as markdowns and promotions.

Supply Chain Planning

FORECASTING AND REPLENISHMENT
Distribution Centre and Store Replenishment
The primary objective of replenishment is to ensure that goods are available for sale when customers require them, and to reduce the working capital at the same time. The solution provides sophisticated planning tools which allow fully automated inventory replenishment for stores and distribution centres. Different planning methods are available which provide for example, stock replenishment based on historical values for fast moving items or reorder point planning for slow moving items. Easy to handle mass maintenance tools will support quick parameter changes for a high volume of articles.

Within a short time the powerful replenishment functionality will reduce the manual workload as well as the working capital for your retail enterprise. Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Multiple forecasting algorithms for different article profiles Multiple replenishment algorithms for different article profiles Integrated replenishment monitor provides analysis of replenishment output such as order quantities, open orders, forecast and other replenishment parameters

Merchandise Distribution
Merchandise distribution controls the flow of goods from the vendor to the store; the merchandise items are procured externally and passed through the distribution centre to the stores. Allocation tables ("push" process) or a collective purchase orders ("pull" process) can be used to control distribution planning. Goods can be placed in storage in the distribution centre, or moved through the distribution centre using the cross-docking or flow-through methods.

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-4PUSH process Retail companies often have to centrally distribute merchandise among a large number of stores, like for example, for initial purchase or promotional items. novaRetail will allow your company to use allocation tables which actively support the distribution of this type of merchandise and then trigger the The

necessary

goods

movements.

distribution among the stores is based on allocation rules which can easily be created, based on historical key figures or on a specified quota. You can have the merchandise delivered directly from the vendor to the store, from the vendor to a distribution centre and then to the store, or from a distribution centre to a store. After you have completed the planning stage, novaRetail will automatically create the relevant documents for procuring or delivering the goods. PULL process Collective purchase orders are used to plan merchandise distribution in the pull process. In novaRetail the collective purchase order combines the requirements of all stores. These requirements exist in form of stock transfer orders (either produced automatically out of store replenishment or manually). All these requirements will be combined automatically into one single order for a vendor - the collective purchase order. The complete PULL process can be automated from store replenishment to external procurement which will drastically reduces the data processing work.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Automatic creation of follow-on documents such as deliveries from warehouse to store Automatic adjustment of allocation quantities at time of goods receipt. Cross-docking and flow-through processes for efficient distribution centre handling

PERISHABLES PLANNING
The procurement of fresh items is characterized by short shelf life, variability in supplying source, price, available quality and quantity. Purchase decisions need to be made to meet aggregated store demands based on actual sales or store orders. The buyer can perform price discovery and initiate

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-5vendor negotiations at any time. The buyer needs the ability to view all possible vendors for any single article with available costs in order to establish that day's selling price with automated purchase order generation. Both push and pull processes are supported with flow of goods directly to stores (DSD) or via the distribution centre (flow through). Vendor evaluations on price, quality, accuracy and timeliness of deliveries are also maintained for future vendor selections. Mobile usability for buyers operating in a fresh item market (e.g., fish market). Single point, portal approach (sourcing cockpit) to an integrated view of all procurement and delivery of fresh items to the store by extending to other applications and services required to execute the procurement process. Additional features of the novaRetail solution include: Demand aggregation Price discovery Auctions and RFQs Negotiations Automated purchase order generation Flexible merchandise flow Fresh Item Workbench

Purchasing
VENDOR RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
Vendor Evaluation and Monitoring
novaRetail allows your company to analyse and assess the performance of your external suppliers via vendor evaluation. A vendor is automatically scored, based on a number of different criteria. The overall score can be used to determine whether a business partner should be retained or eliminated from your vendor base.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Maintaining vendor evaluation criteria such as on time delivery, quality and price accuracy Monitoring ongoing vendor performance via standard reports Analysing overall vendor performance at the end of a period, for example annually Capture other qualitative evaluation criteria for scoring, for example innovation or product packaging

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-6Vendor Rebates
novaRetail supports one-time or periodic settlement of vendor rebates, based on conditions governing cumulative purchase quantities or values, at the end of a period.

This functionality handles the business situation, whereby the vendor agrees to give your company rebates for goods purchased. These rebates are only applicable if a certain quantity or value of goods is purchased within an agreed period of time. The rebates are not given with each invoice but at predefined points in time. The system is able to automatically update the relevant business volume and keep track of rebates applicable.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Managing vendor rebate agreements in the form of master data Automatic business volume updating as purchase orders are raised Automatic calculation of rebate entitlements and posting to General Ledger accounts Reconciliation of retailer and vendor business volumes Rebate settlement over multiple periods, for example monthly, quarterly, annually

PURCHASE ORDER MANAGEMENT

Purchase Order Management will allow your company to manage the procurement process to cover requirements for services and goods from internal or external sources of supply. Both automatic purchase order creation via Replenishment and manual creation are supported. In the case of replenishment, purchased orders can be automatically created based on forecasted requirements or when stocks drop below a certain level. In case an approval procedure for purchasing documents needs to be in place, novaRetail will support this kind of electronic signature also known as release procedure. Only after the approval from an authorized person takes place can purchasing documents be outputted (print, email). Integrated Drag & Drop functionality during order creation will speed up the transaction handling itself.

Purchase Order Processing

Supports the daily operations involved in the procurement of merchandise and settling up with vendors. The functions in this area enable you to order articles for which requirements were determined in the planning run. It comprises quantity calculation, supply source determination,

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-7conversion of purchase requisitions to purchase orders and order monitoring. The purchasing functionality can be used both centrally in the head office and locally in stores.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Maintaining and monitoring vendor confirmations Monitoring fulfilment status of purchase orders Open-to-buy integration Flexible delivery date scheduling

Order Optimising
In order to find the most economic order quantity, costs resulting from stock keeping and from purchasing have to be taken into consideration. The aim of optimal lot-sizing procedures is to group requirements in such a way that costs are minimized. If you order often, the result is low storage costs, but the order costs will be high due to the high number of orders. If you place orders seldomly, order costs remain very low, but storage costs will be very high since warehouse stock must be large enough to cover requirements for a much longer period. The system then adds successive quantities to this lot size until, by means of the particular cost criterion, optimum costs have been established. The system can optimize the quantities of orders to make the most out of agreements with vendors who grant better conditions when complete logistics units (such as entire pallets) are ordered. The quantity optimizing function rounds off quantities according to flexible rules that are predefined. It is possible to round either up or down. The system can also take different units of measure of a product into account.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Investment Buying Automatic Load Building Manual Load Building

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-8RFQ, Quotation & Vendor Comparison

To initiate the procurement process, possible suppliers of merchandise need to be found and selected before regular purchase can take place. novaRetail provides specific functionality to handle request for quotation (RFQ) as an invitation to vendors, to submit a quotation (bid) for the supply of articles or services. The system supports the vendor selection process with the price comparison functionality, on the quotations received.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Request for quotation processing Release of RFQs Vendor Quotation Processing Transmission of RFQs and Quotations

Supply Chain Execution

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
Inventory Valuation
In novaRetail, inventory is valuated at cost (moving average price), which is also known as the "cost inventory method" or the "cost method". All price changes involving article cost will be accurately recorded in the system, which leads to a valuation of inventory at average cost for every individual article. In case your business requires new valuation of a single article or of all articles, inventory revaluation can take place based on cost (purchase price) which will change your merchandise unit cost and update the book values automatically. Furthermore the solution supports valuation at retail, also known as retail inventory method, which is widely used in the industry.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Cost method of inventory valuation Retail method of inventory valuation Value based inventory management for groups of products Stock valuation and overview reports

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-9Shrinkage Management
You can use this business process to make stock adjustments at warehouse or stores. Postings, based on the reason for the shrinkage (breakage, spoilage, theft, depreciation, withdrawal for own use, and so on), are debited to the corresponding G/L account. Statistical analyses can be performed for every posting.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Automatic recording of each inventory movement Multiple movement type to track specific shrinkage reasons

Stock Taking (Physical Inventory)

Every company is legally required to carry out a physical inventory of warehouse stocks at least once a year to balance the physical stocks with the book figures. novaRetail supports your enterprise to carry out a physical inventory for warehouses and stores and furthermore allows you to upload the results from the physical count in the form of a flat file (xls, txt). This upload results in immediate stock and financial postings in the system.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

The ability to conduct cyclical or full stocktakes as required Automatic creation of physical inventory (stocktake) documents Analysis of inventory differences based on tolerances

Goods Receipt & Invoice Verification

Every Goods Receipt will be posted with reference to a Purchase Order document. During goods receipt processing, all key data will be checked automatically against the purchasing document, verifying quantity and articles.

During data processing, most data will be defaulted which significantly reduces the data entry. The fully integrated system will

automatically create the relevant financial postings for external as well as internal accounting. To facilitate a quantity check prior to the actual goods receipt posting, a count list can be printed which allows online update after the physical check, and will serve as a basis for the actual inventory posting.

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- 10 During the processing of an invoice document, the system verifies the quantities and values against the related purchase order and goods receipt postings. In case the invoiced quantities or values exceed the pre-defined tolerance limits, the system will block the invoice for payment. Processing can only take place after an authorized person releases the blocked document.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Complete purchase order history including all goods receipts and invoices stored against original document

Returns to Vendor
The goods return process refers to all merchandises which are to be returned from a store or distribution centre to an external vendor. Returns can be performed for damaged goods; for goods remaining at the end of a promotion or season; and for discontinued merchandise. Full integration exists; from purchase order processing to inventory management right up to accounts payable.

Stock Transfer
In the supply chain, merchandise needs to be transported between sites. The process of transferring articles from one site to another is known as stock transfer. It can be either from distribution centre to store and vice versa or from store to store. novaRetail fully supports transfers involving two different legal entities (company codes) of your enterprise with complete invoicing /billing and financial accounting. Similar to the external procurement process, the stock transfer orders can be automatically created as a result of the replenishment run.

WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT
The Warehouse provides Management flexible,

functionality

automated support in processing all goods movements and in managing stocks in your warehouse complex. The system supports scheduled and efficient processes processing within your of logistics warehouse.

Warehouse Management allows you to

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- 11 map your entire warehouse complex in detail to storage bin level. Not only do you gain an overview of the entire quantity of a material in the warehouse; you can also always determine exactly where a certain material currently is in your warehouse complex.

NOVARETAIL ENHANCEMENTS
novaRetail comes packaged with a number of additional functions which make your life as a grocery retailer a whole lot easier.

Rack Jobber
Rack jobbers are wholesalers or manufacturers to whom you grant sales space (usually shelf space) in your store. These rack jobbers offer goods that are not included in your existing assortment. The goods are the property of the rack jobber, but they are sold via your retail sites POS system and no other logistic activities are carried out from your side.

The vendors own employee can be in the store to sell their goods, to manage their stock and arrange the delivery for customers if necessary. Your store collects the money from the consumer on behalf of the vendor. Certain commission charged to the rack jobber vendor will be deducted from the total sales revenue during the settlement.

novaRetail provides special functionality to maintain the relevant master data, including bar code, till text and sales prices for the rack jobber articles, in order to process standard POS sales activities. On a periodic basis, the rack jobber will be paid based on sales volume minus the commission agreed.

Vendor consignment
novaRetail allows you to manage consignment stock from your vendors efficiently. The consignment articles belong to the vendor until they are sold or transferred into your companys own valuated stock. The logistics handling for consignment articles is identical to standard trading goods where your company keeps track of inventory, replenish stock and carries out sales. Different handling exist for inventory valuation, where consignment goods are not considered as part of your inventory balance, and payment processing only takes place periodically based on sales volume.

The solution supports your consignment settlement process from sales reporting and quantity allocation up to invoice processing. An easy to handle workbench will guide you through the process steps and carries out most of the activities automatically.

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- 12 Handheld Terminals (HHT) and RFID

The usage of handheld terminals and RFID will optimize the date processing time as well as increase the data quality throughout the whole supply chain. In the warehouse, goods movement can literally be processed online and stock count executed more efficient than ever. The usage in the store will allow price inquires, provide the latest sales history with stock on hand information as well as trigger immediate replenishment for out of stock items.

Multi-Channel Retailing
STORE MERCHANDISE MANAGEMENT
Retail Store (web based Back Office)
The majority of transaction, which are relevant for store operations from procurement to inventory management and sales (sales order processing) can be executed with the retail store, which is a web based novaRetail front end for store users. Simplified screens will allow a fast deployment for the store users with minimum training effort.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Store Price Management Store Promotion Management Physical Inventory (Stocktake) Goods Receipt, Stock Transfer and Returns Store Replenishment Master data such as articles and store assortments

STORE CONNECTIVITY
POS Interface (Sales & Return)
Merchandises in stores are normally sold using electronic cash registers (POS systems). novaRetail contains a pre-defined interface to communicate with the POS system (Point of Sales) resulting in more of an integrated system rather than an interfaced system.
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Inbound (POS to novaRetail) and outbound processing (novaRetail to POS) is supported and the usage of change pointers in novaRetail will smooth the outbound communication with a minimum volume on data. Data like merchandise categories, article data (sales price, barcode, till text, unit of measure, etc.) taxes and exchange rates as well as promotions can be send out from novaRetail to the POS system.

Sales figures (including returns) on an aggregated basis and financial transactions from the stores will be uploaded to novaRetail.

The POS monitor in novaRetail provides functionality to monitor all POS inbound and outbound activities. The system classifies every outbound and inbound message and records it in a log.

Enterprise Management and Support

MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT
Organization Structure
The Organisation Structure in novaRetail consists of several organisational elements, which together represents the entire legal and organisational structure of a company. It forms the basis for all business functions and reporting. The organisational units range from accounting, controlling, purchasing and sales to stores and distribution centres. Within this framework, all business processes can be executed and integrated.

Article master, Merchandise Category and Listing

The article master contains information on all the items that a retail enterprise procures, stores and sells. It is the company's central source for retrieving article-specific data such as the bar code, units of measure, procurement and replenishment data.

To ease and streamline the article master maintenance, the solution contains sophisticated listing functionality for automatic assignment of articles to assortments. The assortment defines which articles are available in a site during a specified time period.

The

merchandise

categories

and

hierarchy

allows the enterprise to classify and structure all merchandises to support the daily business. In

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- 14 novaRetail, each article will be assigned to exactly one merchandise category, while one merchandise category can group many articles with same attributes.

Additional features of the novaRetail solution include:

Simplified article maintenance screens for different user departments Structured article creation such as sales sets Mass maintenance tools for efficient article master processing Extensive search helps for locating articles efficiently

Business Partners
Business partners are individuals or corporations with whom a company has a business relationship. Customers and vendors are business partners involving the transfer of goods and services. Details of business partners are managed in master records, which contain all the necessary information for processing business transactions. Then when processing business transactions, the system proposes the relevant information, saving your company time and effort while reducing errors during data entry.

Product Catalog
The novaRetail Product Catalog function allows you to store, retrieve, and manage data (such as articles, prices and groupings) to be used in advertising materials such as catalogs, promotional flyers, CD-ROM disks, on-line services and multimedia kiosks at the point-of-sale. It is an important advertising medium which provides customers with product information. novaRetail supports management of such advertising or promotional material from a single system, with integration of images, audio, or video in your product catalog, to be used in several different media.

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING
General Ledger
The primary task of General Ledger (GL) Accounting is to record all accounting

transactions and provide a comprehensive picture for external accounting. The General Ledger provides a complete record of all business transactions and is the centralized,

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- 15 up-to-date reference for the rendering of accounts. Actual individual transactions posted online and in realtime can be checked at any given point in by displaying the original documents.

novaRetail records all business transactions in the system, which is fully integrated with all operational modules. Therefore, your company is assured of accounting data which is always accurate and up-to-date.

A pre-defined chart of accounts will give your company or companies a transparent frame for all financial activities as well as the required basis for statutory reporting.

Accounts Payable
The Accounts Payable application component records and manages accounting data for all vendors. It is also an integral part of the purchasing function where deliveries and invoices are managed according to vendors. novaRetail automatically triggers financial postings in response to operative transactions. For instance, during purchase invoice verification processing, a suppliers invoice is recorded & posted after an automatic verification against defined tolerance limits; small differences arising due to variances are simultaneously & automatically posted to adjustment accounts. Any applicable tax postings are also auto determined and posted to tax accounts.

Payments can be processed partially or in full, and payment methods like check, cash or telegraphic transfers (TT) etc are possible. Check management functionality enables an automatic generation and printing of checks during automatic payment run or through a manual process.

In addition the solution delivers various posting tools such as sample documents or recurring entries, to streamline and accelerate the data processing.

Accounts Receivable
The Accounts Receivable application component records and manages accounting data of all customers and store sales, which is also an integral part of sales management. It also provides the data required for effective credit management which will be essential for your wholesale business.

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novaRetail also provides you account management functionality such as Dunning which enables you to send out reminder letters automatically to customers with outstanding balances based on days in arrear.

Incoming payments can be processed and open invoices cleared automatically. Various posting tools similar to Accounts Receivable are available as well.

Asset accounting
Asset accounting in novaRetail is used for managing and supervising fixed assets. It serves as a subsidiary ledger to the General Ledger.

Asset accounting integrates with General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Controlling and Material Management in the following ways:

Posting of asset acquisitions and retirements that are integrated with accounts payable, accounts receivable and material management.

Posting of depreciation from asset accounting to the appropriate general ledger accounts and cost centres.

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
Controlling
Controlling, which is also known as management or internal accounting, provides a companys management with information for decision-making. It facilitates coordination, monitoring and optimization of all processes in an organization. In novaRetail, organizational units such as Cost Centres, Internal Orders & Profit Centres are available.

In order to plan future business activities the system provides cost centre planning functionality and budgeting which allows your company periodic control and monitoring of internal activities efficiently. Plan data can be easily uploaded from excel into novaRetail. Assigning actual costs to cost centres will allow the management to analyze variances between actual costs from the planned or targeted costs. novaRetail provide various

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- 17 analysis reports for cost centre accounting.

The profit centre component will enable your company to generate profit and loss statements per store. It allows you to obtain inventory, fixed asset, payable and receivable values at store level. Furthermore, profit centre planning functionality will also help you to control and monitor the performance of each store by allowing you to plan for revenue and selected balance sheet items for each store.

User-friendly transactions with full integration of finance with logistics establish analysis of internal cost and provide a solid basis for management decisions.

FINANCIAL SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Cash Flow
novaRetail contains functionality for cash management, with the goal to provide management with an overview of the liquidity status of the company. The system offers two kinds of evaluations, one is the Cash Position which provides a short-term view for monitoring the liquidity on bank accounts and the other is the Liquidity Forecast which enables evaluation of customers, vendors or sub-ledgers for the mid/long term view. The cash management functionality is a fully integrated feature which is based on figures received from accounts receivables, accounts payables and the general ledger.

General Features
AUTHORIZATION
novaRetail contains pre-defined job roles with restricted authorization to limit the system access for your users based on the job requirements.

For audit and security purposes, most user activities like document changes are automatically recorded in the novaRetail system which will offer additional security to the authorization concept.

ACCOUNT DETERMINATION

CIBER, 201 Miller St, North Sydney, 2060 +(61) 2 8920 0887 +(61) 2 8920 3881 www.ciber.com.au

- 18 The novaRetail system is a fully integrated system where postings in logistics automatically trigger financial postings, such as revenue, inventory, cost of sales and adjustments as well as tax handling. The automatic account determination is tailored for a pre-defined chart of account and will offer your company transparent financial postings and will further more assure correct external reporting.

SCHEDULE MANAGER (MONTH END ACTIVITIES)

The Schedule Manager allows or simplifies by means of considerable automation, the definition, scheduling, execution and control of periodically recurring work, for example, the period-end closing. Every operation to be executed in the period-end closing (for example, depreciation calculation for the month) is listed as a processing step in the Schedule Manager. Using Schedule Manager provides the following benefits:

The reduction of the lead times of the period-end closing since only the actually incorrect objects are processed with repeated lead times for the error handling. Performance advantages due to less database accesses. Structured approach to all month-end activities which ensues no steps are missed and are processed in correct sequence.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (REPORTING)

Reporting is the display of information and process activities on aggregated or detailed level.

novaRetail provides several reporting tools such as a built-in data warehouse for logistics, which allows you fast access of statistical data as well as standard reports for dynamic transaction data with further details. navigation (interactive) into document

For fast document tracking novaRetail links all related business documents which allows you to easily branch from one document to another. For example, from a purchase order to the relevant payment document or from the goods receipt posting to the related payment document.

CIBER, 201 Miller St, North Sydney, 2060 +(61) 2 8920 0887 +(61) 2 8920 3881 www.ciber.com.au

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CIBER, 201 Miller St, North Sydney, 2060 +(61) 2 8920 0887 +(61) 2 8920 3881 www.ciber.com.au