Dolcis buckles up for £1.5m IT makeover

Shoe retailer Dolcis is spending £1.5m on a radical overhaul of its systems following its sale to a private equity consortium.

Dolcis was divested from parent Alexon and sold to a private equity consortium late last year and this meant the retailer needed to establish many new systems.

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This includes the purchase of a merchandising system called Mercatis from BT Expedite and a new till system and warehouse system. The whole investment is around £1.5m.

A key part of that is a £100,000 investment, including training, in a Windows-based accounting package which makes it easier to monitor store performance.

The Dream financials software from Coda Group is easier to use for non-finance professionals and speeds up training for new hires within Dolcis' finance department, it said.

Finance director Richard Clark chose the system because he had used it in a former role at men's fashion retailer D2 and shoe store Qube.

The Dream system provides the retailer with a unified ledger, giving executives a much clearer picture of purchasing across the store estate.

Clark said: "The system allows the finance function to give value-add to the rest of the business. It gives us the ability to analyse performance and more flexibility to react to changes in the environment."