Retail Ventures, Inc.

Sun Java Application Platform Suite Drive Enterprise Productivity

Retail Ventures, Inc. (RVI), a holding company based in Columbus, Ohio, operates off-price department stores in the United States, including Value City Department Stores, Filene's Basement, and DSW shoes and accessories. With more than 340 locations, RVI employs over 20,000 employees. RVI’s mission is to deliver effective and cost-efficient corporate and support services for each of the retail brands, while allowing them to focus on merchandising and store operations.

Customer Challenges

Reduce HR costs by creating manager and employee self-service portals
Reduce costs by consolidating existing home-grown applications and legacy systems across three business entities
Improve internal communication capabilities that facilitate training and messaging

Solution

RVI has embraced the Java Application Platform Suite, Java technology, the Solaris Operating System (OS), and Sun Fire V440 and V220 servers to create a single, efficient, and cost-effective communication platform across all brands.

Business Results

Employees and managers can submit vacation requests and update payroll information directly, reducing overhead and decreasing turnaround time
Employee communication and training materials are now delivered through the Web, which is faster and less costly than traditional CD and VCR media.
Employees and managers from different divisions use the same portal. Users are presented with appropriate branding, applications, and information depending on their IDs and roles

Products and Services

Story Details

Bringing together three companies under one roof can present some interesting IT challenges, and this was the situation when Retail Ventures was formed as the holding company for three large retail operations. It was soon apparent that there would be significant economies in consolidating the various IT systems. There was little application interoperability among core applications, and virtually none across divisional boundaries. Human resource (HR) activities were particularly challenged – all vacation requests, addresses, benefits changes, and so on were processed manually. Management approval was slowed by an inefficient workflow. Tracking personnel-related assets, such as employee training, was extremely difficult. With the existing IT infrastructure – built mainly with in-house applications across a range of hardware and OS platforms – there was no way to centralize communication and services. After deciding on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the company evaluated solutions from leading IT vendors. RVI chose Sun products and technology as the base platform for its SOA.

A flexible and secure middleware platform, the Java Enterprise System provides all the tools and functionality needed to rapidly develop, deploy, and manage service-oriented solutions across the value chain – to virtually any device – based on Java 2 Platform, Enterprise (J2EE) technology. After a few months, a platform was created based on Java technology and Web services, enabling integration among enterprise applications. The Solaris OS provided the choice, reliability, and performance needed for a rock-solid deployment.

" The real key to our success when rolling out our employee self-service portal is the efficiency of the Java Application Platform Suite, reducing development time and lowering deployment costs. "

— David Yutzy, Manager, Retail Ventures, Inc.

Within a few months, RVI rolled out an identity-based employee portal based on the Java System Portal Server, Java System Application Server, and Java System Identity Manager. RVI focused on high-impact HR applications, such as employee and manager self-service, and training. The new portal interacts directly with back-end HR systems, so requests and changes are reflected almost immediately. Because not every employee has access to a PC, and some are less comfortable using PCs, RVI worked to create an easy-to-use interface that would be accessible on both PCs and touch-screen kiosks. Once deployed, demand on HR personnel was reduced dramatically, and response time and related employee satisfaction improved almost immediately.

"The Java Enterprise System helped us create a single, reliable, available platform for all brands. Before, systems went down all the time. Now, the system is rock solid, with impressive performance compared to our previous infrastructure," said David Yutzy, Manager, Web, Intranet, and CRM systems.

One of the team's important goals was to reduce ongoing maintenance and support costs. A single instance of the Java System Portal Server provides the correct brand look and feel, offering appropriate applications and information according to a user's role and identity. From either PC or kiosk, employees can also receive on-demand training. Compared with conventional training delivery methods, such as video tapes or CDs, the employee portal delivers training more quickly, is easier to update, and is less expensive overall to produce. Managers enjoy instant access to training reports through the portal.

The Java Enterprise System is an ideal platform for retail environments, providing a robust platform to improve synergy across business units. In 2006, RVI expects to deploy community and collaboration applications using the existing portal infrastructure.