Quality Assurance at leading clothing retailer Edcon (Edgars, CNA, Boardmans, Jet, Jetmart) has taken on a whole new dimension with the implementation of a sophisticated workflow and business intelligence solution that was developed by Edcon’s Microsoft applications development partner 3fifteen.

The Horizon system was developed specifically to deliver a host of productivity enhancing solutions to the Edcon Group. 3fifteen recently upgraded Edcon’s legacy QA system onto its Microsoft.Net platform.

According to 3fifteen programme manager Esme Alberts, the system was designed to enable managers to evaluate and track the quality of merchandise to be sold in stores countrywide. “For example, each product type is subjected to a rigorous quality evaluation for a host of factors ranging from colourfastness and shrinkage, product construction and how well clothing fits the body, to testing the functionality of products such as electrical goods.”

As thousands of fabric samples and products are evaluated monthly, the system is required to track these evaluations and be readily accessible for comparative purposes should a problem be found at a later date.

Horizon also serves as a problem-logging repository. Complaints from customers can be evaluated to determine the type of issue raised, whether it relates to a specific manufacturer or a specific fabric type. This is one of a number of ways that Horizon enables Edcon Quality Assurance Department to quickly detect whether quality from a specific supplier is declining.

Edcon Quality assurance executive manager Noël Paulson says the Business Intelligence capabilities of the system have been sharpened in this phase of the project. “We are delighted with the ease-of-use of Horizon.  It has not only provided us with increased quality assurance processes on line, but we now have a valuable management tool in terms of the extensive amount of information captured and stored in the Horizon database.”