Re-engineering the engine room of a retail icon

An inventory blind spot

Shortly after joining, Oroton’s technology leadership spent a first quarter observing the business closely before setting a board-approved roadmap. One issue rose immediately to the top: inventory accuracy.

No one could say with confidence exactly how much stock the business held at any given moment. In many cases the variance was only one or two percent, but in others it reached as high as 15%. The root cause was architectural. Inventory and order data flowed through the point-of-sale system rather than the order management system communicating directly with the ERP. The approach carried some advantages, but the disadvantages had become impossible to ignore as the business grew.

Oroton made the decision to replace its order management system and point of sale together, selecting NewStore, and to introduce MuleSoft as a dedicated integration platform. Both decisions were made on merit; NewStore met the organisation’s requirements most closely without the unnecessary complexity of heavier systems. The remaining question was who could deliver and integrate these platforms into a single, dependable architecture.

A rare pairing of expertise

As Oroton evaluated delivery partners, AbsoluteLabs stood out for the depth of its hands-on experience with both NewStore and MuleSoft, a combination few could match.

"NewStore recommends AbsoluteLabs really, really highly. We very quickly realised, as we went through the project, why they say that."
‍Saurabh Bhola, CTO, Oroton

Oroton had one important condition. Given the scale of the project and the change management involved, the business wanted a partner with a local presence. AbsoluteLabs responded decisively, committing to local, on-the-ground project leadership for the engagement, the assurance Oroton needed to move forward with confidence.

Experience, applied with discipline

Working to an accelerated six-month timeline, AbsoluteLabs began with a detailed discovery workshop that established the full scope of work. Crucially, having mapped that scope, the team held firm to the original August go-live date

What made the partnership work was experience applied with discipline:

• Thorough requirements gathering. AbsoluteLabs asked the right questions from the outset - and kept probing in the areas where Oroton’s newly formed team had gaps, surfacing technical debt and requirements that might otherwise have gone undiscovered.
• Retail-first thinking. The team understood that a NewStore rollout is a retail project, not merely a technology project, and insisted on involving the retail team from day zero — a factor Oroton credits as critical to the project’s success.
• World-class project management. AbsoluteLabs project lead Ayush, working alongside Oroton’s internal project manager, coordinated teams, keeping decisions visible and the project moving across as many as five time zones.

"They kept pace with us, and they pushed us to deliver the answers in the right timeline, so the overall project could still be delivered on time."
‍Saurabh Bhola, CTO, Oroton

Rising to the challenge

Midway through, an unexpected complication emerged. Oroton’s ERP required significant work, and the incumbent partner supporting it was not equipped to deliver. Recognising the risk to the overall timeline, AbsoluteLabs stepped up, drawing on its network to introduce a trusted partner it had worked with before on similar changes.

That partner supported Oroton through the remainder of the project, and the go-live held firm. Oroton had built in an internal buffer; it never needed to use it.

“That was a turning point for the project. They realised it had an implication to the overall timeline, and they really stepped up. The go-live was as promised, exactly on the same date.”
‍Saurabh Bhola, CTO, Oroton

Tested, then trusted

The closing stages were set by structure and rigour. A clear programme management framework, with defined meeting, intervention and decision points, kept everyone on track. AbsoluteLabs delivered a well-tested product, while Oroton’s own testers added knowledge of the business’s edge cases, tracking cleanly to closure.

Disciplined version management meant old issues were not reintroduced in later releases. The team ran a three-and-a-half-week pilot in a live store, with order management validated separately against real production orders. Detailed rollback and scenario plans were prepared - and, thanks to the preparation that preceded go-live, never needed.

Beyond the target

Phase one has been, by Oroton's own measure, a complete success. The headline objective, improving inventory accuracy, was measured through year-on-year unfulfilled ship-from-store orders, with an initial target of a 70% reduction.

"Our target was reducing them by 70%. We are constantly hitting numbers that are 85 to 95% lower compared to last year."
‍Saurabh Bhola, CTO, Oroton

Just as importantly, the new architecture has created genuine visibility, allowing Oroton to identify and tackle the reasons behind the small remaining percentage of unfulfilled orders, with the expectation of reducing them to rare exceptions. Queues at peak times have been eliminated now that staff can sell from mobile devices anywhere in the store, and feedback from the retail team has been overwhelmingly positive.

The return on investment, in short, has already been delivered.

A team asking for more

With the heavy lifting of phase one complete, Oroton is already progressing the next wave of work - clienteling, loyalty, and customer profile enrichment in store, driven by a retail team that is, in the CTO’s words, “asking for more.” The brand is also exploring AI-assisted store associates: an agent that can instantly answer questions about a customer or locate any product across the store, simply by asking.