Mydin Mohamed Holdings Berhad
Mydin Mohamed Holdings Berhad had its humble beginnings back in 1957 in the same year that Malaysia got its independence. The founder, Mr. Mydin Mohamed was a keen trader. His rst shop was in Kota Baru, Kelantan where he catered to the needs of the Indian Muslim community. Following his success in Kelantan, he decided to open another branch in the heart of Kuala Lumpur at the Masjid Jamek area. From there on, through sheer hard work and keen business acumen, there was no turning back.
Today, Mydin is the largest local wholesaler in Malaysia that serves all communities. It has 4,000 employees across 28 branches nationwide. In the hypermarket industry, having the right technology is the key that enables business to grow pro tably and compete successfully in the market. Mydin has to be constantly on its toes to cater to its customers’ ever-changing needs. This means that Mydin has to provide its products at the right time and at the right price to the right customer while ensuring excellent service.
The objective is to achieve marketing speed and overall e ciency of operations and supply chain management. From the suppliers to the logistics and warehouse, to Mydin’s ground sta and to the management team, e ciency and productivity are important factors for timely and accurate decision-making. With so many strong competitors in the local retail outlets, one cannot a ord to be tardy. To di erentiate itself, Mydin had to rede ne the value it brings to its customers. Mydin’s brand name signi es convenience, quality and value for money.
Thus, it looks into Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to achieve these goals. management team. To date, the hypermart has put in place the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system, IP telephony system, Point of Sales (POS) system, business intelligence system, logistics and manufacturing system, security surveillance and many more. “Tying and linking all these systems together so that they can communicate to one another is very crucial because the network infrastructure is the backbone of our entire IT system.
In a way, it is the bloodline of our ICT infrastructure that a ects our day to day operations,” said Malik Murad Ali, IT Manager of Mydin Mohamed Holdings Berhad. The company’s previous networking systems were not able to complement and supports the complexity of their systems. As a result enormous costs and additional resources are needed to reconcile the problems and transactions faced by the employees and customers. Challenges and Issues Mydin manages over 200,000 unique items and processes millions worth of transactions daily.
Its key challenge is to gain insight into these huge volumes of transactions. The company needs to track the exact products and volumes of goods owing in and out of the company. Next, a real-time network infrastructure is required to drive incremental sales and top line results. Mydin next move is to improve the communication with all its 28 branches nationwide. Its suppliers typically have a very small quota for promotional items. “If we want to buy in bulk to enjoy greater savings, we need to act fast to place the orders on the same day.
Therefore, determining each store’s inventory and quota at the shortest time possible is the real challenge. In the past, we are unable to take full advantage of the promotional o ers when they are available,” said Malik. It is therefore important that timely and accurate information can reach the right person at the time to aid them in their daily operations and decision making. In this way, additional business value can be delivered to customers when real-time in-formation can be accessed by the sales personnel and store managers.
In order to fuel their growth, Mydin sets out to look for a standard based solution that can complement and support its current IT systems; a solution that is reliable, scalable and robust. www. alliedtelesis. com.
Situation Analysis Getting the right information to the right people at the right time is crucial. Mydin’s top priority is to ensure consistent ow of communication in their supply chain network, from the suppliers, to logistics and warehouse, to the ground sta and Page 2 | Allied Telesis Case Study: Mydin Mohamed Holdings Berhad Selection Criteria
Mydin was looking at ‘value for money’ pricing, good customer support and an open and direct communication with its vendor as its key selection criteria. After a thorough selection process, Mydin chose Allied Telesis, one of the leading global IP networking solutions leaders. “Allied Telesis products are standard based. Apart from the standard criteria of reliable, scalable and robust, their products were able to complement most of our other IT systems. Open communication is especially important to us. I’m happy that Allied Telesis met all these criteria.
I am also very grateful for their openness in accepting issues and to immediately rectify these issues. That is why we have standardized on Allied Telesis’ products. ” Allied Telesis’ AT-8300/8000S series advanced stackable Layer 2 managed switches for ACCESS needs. The proposed solution is an end-to-end Layer 3 network with advanced functionality that ensures availability, manageability, security, adaptability and performance that compliance to Mydin’s design and business objective.
The overall backbone designed is based on redundant collapsed gigabit backbone with scalability in mind. 40Gbps switching performances at the CORE provide non-blocking high-speed transfer of data packets to and from the server farm and access. Core IP routing with advanced, exible Policy-Based Quality of Service, rich and proven multicast support and a comprehensive set of con guration and control features to simplify administration and maintenance tasks. The design also incorporates the needs to control and provide e ciency in delivering of data application and future support for Voice and Video deployment.
