Earlier this month IBM and global shoemaker ECCO Sko A/S announced a five-year, $12 million services agreement for IBM to support the company's existing SAP R/3 environment and the implementation of a new ERP business solution with several new modules that will enable the company to continue its aggressive growth and global expansion strategy.

According to IBM, the shoemaker has decided to execute a more flexible and modern version of SAP with several new modules including customer relationship management, supply chain management, and supplier relationship management. IBM Global Business Services consultants will implement and manage the new modules as well as support ECCO's current SAP installation. ECCO is headquartered in Denmark but has a large, geographically dispersed network of business units.

"As one of relatively few brand owners, ECCO insists on owning the entire value chain from product design and development to tanneries, factories, and wholesaling. Moreover, we own about 100 shops and are closely integrated with the hundreds of outlets that are operated by partners all over the world," says Mikael Thinghuus, COO at ECCO. "IBM's expertise combined with SAP's integrated solution design will increase our flexibility and enable us to handle the continuous adjustments that are necessary in the supply chain. Also, it's our aim to increase the visibility of the supply chain metrics and performance."

In addition — and this is what's really cool — ECCO has the largest System i installation in the Nordics and has been a System i customer for many years. In fact, IBM won its first deal back in 1998 when ECCO decided to go with SAP. Previously, the shoemaker had been running a SAP pilot on HP equipment at its plant in Slovakia. Also, ECCO will continue running SAP on System i in the coming years.