Opentaps Sempione ERP

Parco Sempione is an oasis of greenery and neoclassical architecture in the heart of Milan, the fashion capital of the world. And just down the street on Corso Sempione, you will find one of Milan's trendiest destinations -- Sempione SEI. This world-famous boutique, open from 4 PM to 2 AM, occupies nearly 8000 square feet (800 square meters) on two stories and has hosted fashion shows and events, such as the Lancia shoe designed in conjunction with Fiat. There is also a popular bar inside the store, Italian style.

But a cutting-edge fashion boutique must also be a successful business. For the owners of Sempione SEI, this meant being able to manage inventory efficiently across several retail stores and a central warehouse, all located in the Milan area. They were relying on a custom-built point of sales and inventory management system in Visual Basic, but over time the cost of maintaining this solution became increasingly expensive. After researching several commercial alternatives, they decided to implement the opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM system because of its lower cost and flexibility.

Sempione SEI chose to work with Integrating Web from Bologna, Italy to help implement this new system. With backgrounds from London's International Credit Exchange and Bologna's Institute of Nuclear Physics, Integrating Web is no stranger to large-scale software. They have already implemented several open-source solutions for other companies, and they preferred opentaps both for its feature set and, more importantly, technical strength. To them, the built-in support for the Google Web Toolkit, the clean and well separated domain driven architecture, and the reporting capabilities of opentaps analytics made it easier to deliver a powerful yet user-friendly system.

The opentaps implementation for Sempione SEI covered several areas of their business, including product management, warehouse and inventory management, pointed sales, and financials. Integrating Web built a custom Ajax-based catalog management system around the opentaps product catalog for Sempione, so they could have an easy-to-use interface for managing their product information. They configured the opentaps warehouse and purchasing applications to allow Sempione to automate inventory management. With opentaps, Sempione could now set inventory safety stock levels, and the Material Resources Planning (MRP) system in opentaps would help automate inventory transfers between their warehouses and generate purchase orders for Sempione's suppliers. They customized the Point Of Sales (POS) module bundled with opentaps to display inventory information to cashiers in the Sempione store and enhanced the general look and feel of the POS terminal. The POS terminal was also configured to meet their different needs of both fit fashion boutique and the bar. Finally, Integrating Web extended opentaps analytics to create custom reports for Sempione, extending the built-in data warehouse and the GWT-based query builder.

So, next time you're in Milan, be sure to take a stroll through the Parco Sempione, have an espresso at the Sempione SEI bar, and take a look at another example of opentaps In Action.