Regional furniture chain Gardner White modernizes enterprise with SAP
A Michigan-based furniture & mattress retailer is rolling out a new ERP platform to scale itself for expansion and artificial intelligence innovation.
Gardner White, a 113-year-old, family-owned retailer with 20 furniture & mattress stores across Michigan, faced the limits of a legacy ERP system that it found was constraining growth and limiting efficiency.
Issues included the requirement for store associates to key transactions directly into an almost 40-year-old legacy ERP system. Associates were unable to build shopping carts or hold quotes for customers returning later that day, as everything had to be entered in real time.
In the warehouse, receiving, picking, and returns were run on mobile systems, but gaps still required employees to use manual workarounds which led to errors. Finance personnel had to perform mission-critical functions using spreadsheets.
While the legacy ERP system handled some core functions, integration with third-party service providers was patchy, often requiring the use of manual processes and prohibiting a consistent, real-time view of operations.
The company decided to upgrade to a new ERP platform that would provide better user experience, a single version of enterprise data, scalability for growth, agility, and adaptability for evolving AI technology.
Gardner White selected the SAP Business Suite for Retail, with TRC Solutions as its systems integration provider. ERP modules the retailer is deploying include:
- SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud (Retail Edition) – Core ERP platform managing finance, procurement, merchandising, warehouse, and service.
- SAP Customer Checkout (CCO) – POS solution deployed to approximately 370 POS terminals across all stores.
- SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) – Performs demand and response and supply planning.
- SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) – Embedded reporting dashboards for finance, procurement, and sales.
- SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) – Cloud integration suite connecting several business solutions and financing partners.
- Franchise Portal – Built on the SAP BTP Build Work Zone entry point, enabling franchisees to view sales, purchases, and franchise fees due.
Gardner White adopted a phased implementation approach. Release 1 would deliver a minimum viable core — finance, procurement, inventory, and POS integration. Release 2 would scale across stores and supply chain, while release 3 would drive continuous innovation, with new services added on SAP BTP.
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In addition, the retailer adopted “fit-to-standard” implementation principles that require it to utilize best practices in its deployment of the SAP solutions.
"Endless customization was exactly what trapped us in the past," said Matt Webster, director of business systems at Gardner White. "Fit-to-standard forces us to adopt best practice — and that’s how we’ll scale without fragility I want to look at this company in five years and say this was the most important decision we made. That it enabled the company to grow as fast as we were able to sell product and fund expansion."
