MFI is weeks away from going live with the final phase of its SAP implementation.

The core financial and supply chain applications are being tested and are due to go live in May.

SAP retail systems specialist Ciber Novasoft has developed the applications and is hosting them offshore at two sites in the US as part of a five-year managed services contract. The project has been led by a 300-strong development and support team based in London, New York and Bangalore, India.

MFI had just nine months to get systems running after it separated from previous owner Galiform. SAP-based merchandising, logistics, customer fulfilment and finance applications are being used because MFI has sought to remodel itself from a vertically integrated manufacturing operation to a global sourcing product supply chain business.

Ciber Novasoft advised MFI’s owner Merchant Equity Partners during the due diligence process on a system separation strategy.

The three phase software implementation began in November 2006 and the first and second phases of the project went live last May and September respectively.

MFI IT director Chris Mangham said that the company chose to work with Ciber Novasoft to reduce IT risk and free his staff to focus on its core business.

The managed services contract also includes IT strategy development, help desk, data centre and web hosting, infrastructure consolidation, network monitoring and SAP application support.

There is still work to be done to move MFI off other legacy applications that it was left running after the split from Galiform. 52 of these projects are still under way and MFI is also pushing ahead with a number of other unspecified transformation projects.

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