The GST Project

The introduction of the GST took place on July 01, 2000. This affected the systems Big W depended on for the daily operation of their business. Big W's GST Project focused on modifying these systems to meet legislative requirements and provide the business with effective tools in the new taxation environment.

Under the new tax system Big W pays GST on all goods and services purchased and collects GST for all goods and services sold. GST paid by Big W is tracked and accumulated as an input tax; GST collected by Big W is tracked and accumulated as an output tax. At the end of each tax period the net amount of GST (output tax value - input tax value) is passed to the government.

The GST impacted Big W's systems in three ways :

• - Systems to be altered to track input and output tax transactions.
  - Big W's item management systems to be modified to support the storage and processing of GST rate information at the item level.
  - Audit requirements from the Australian Taxation Office to be met.

Hence the GST project would encompass the modification and testing of programs requiring alteration to meet business and legislative requirements for the GST.

Big W Systems

The System For Retailing is the central system comprising of a tightly integrated suite of programs. Nine major application groups constitute the core system. The Central Database system is responsible for the management and communication of information between Big W's central and warehousing systems. In Store Processor system provides inventory and Price Management functionality for the store.

The system used by Big W was HP K570 UX 10.20. The System for Retailing system was developed in Cobol and the Central Database, Rebate and In Store Processor systems were in Informix.

The Solution

The criticality of the GST project was that all systems incorporating GST had to go live and work perfectly on the rollover date, July 1, 2000. The first step was to work backwards and ensure that the enhanced system was delivered to Big W within the appropriate timeframe. A unique conversion methodology was designed by Tata Infotech for this project.

The Change Specifications phase on site at Sydney, Australia consisted of validating application inventory, identifying impacted programs, providing program specifications, identifying priority of modifications, baseline testing of all programs and preparing Change Specification document. The Conversion and Unit Testing phase was executed by Tata Infotech. End-to-end User Testing and Acceptance phase was successfully executed on site at Big W. The entire project was completed on schedule in six months by 39 Tata Infotech consultants.

Benefits to Big W

Big W met all the GST legislative requirements of the Australian Taxation office.
Since the GST rate was stored at the item level, it provided maximum flexibility and allowed handling of existing exceptions and future variations to the GST legislation.
During the project, Tata Infotech helped Big W identify further programs impacted by the tax changes as against what was initially specified by Big W.

The Relationship

Tata Infotech had executed a Year 2000 conversion project for Big W during 1997-1998. The System for Retailing system in Cobol was made Year 2000 compliant. The GST conversion project was awarded to Tata Infotech based on the customer's delight with the Year 2000 project.

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