Paperchase Upgrades IT Infrastructure for Growth

Paperchase, the international stationery retailer, has been working with Retail Assist to deliver future capacity for growth by undertaking a full upgrade of the infrastructure and operating system that underpins its omnichannel supply chain solution, Merret, which is also provided by us.

Merret utilises highly resilient IBM iSeries technology and software to run the platform, but over time, supporting older versions of these products can become more challenging to deliver as system components fall out of support. As such, Paperchase elected to invest in the latest IBM technology available to benefit from faster processing time, improved application availability, increased system capacity and extended support arrangements.

This was a challenging project to deliver during the pandemic, due to the worldwide shortages of computer chips, and other parts, so the build process was much more complex than usual. Despite delays with part availability, we still managed to deliver the project go-live within the target window, with the transition and build process completed in just two weeks without any issues.

Rick Dearman, Head of IT at Paperchase, commented: “As a result of the upgrade we now have minimal downtime, and much quicker overnight schedules. It has removed many of our time-consuming administrative tasks, clearing disk space. The new system has surpassed our expectations in terms of speed and availability. It has given us a brilliant foundation on which to proceed and focus on our future growth and development as a business”.

Kieran Bowden, Chief Commercial Officer at Retail Assist, stated: “This has been a rewarding project to be involved in, as we’ve now provided Paperchase with a much more reliable and efficient base to host Merret and perform much more effective operations moving forward. The team involved have done a fantastic job with an extremely successful transition to new systems, and we look forward to continuing our relationship into the future.”