Jungle junks pre Xmas site relaunch

Order backlog monkey business

By Robert Blincoe, 13th November 2001

SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had

A software rollout fiasco has forced Jungle.com to re-launch its website in the New Year - straight after the Christmas sales retail sweet spot.

The new-look store was due to launch in late October but it has now got an 8 January kick-off date. It will be business as usual between now and then.

The site revamp is delayed because Jungle has nursed an order backlog headache for more than month, after installing the final parts of a £5 million Retek information management system.

Now, according to PC Advisor, four top men from of Retek US were flown into the UK at the weekend to join the 22-strong UK team, currently working out of Jungle's head offices, attempting to unscramble customer data.

Jungle now expects the backlog to have cleared by the coming weekend.

The final parts of the £5 million Retek system went live on 24 September. Elements had run for weeks, but when the last components went live, it soon became clear that orders failed to get through from the computer system to the warehouse. Some orders never made the journey at all; at other times bursts of orders appeared.

The backlog had the secondary effect that suddenly the company had to order huge amounts of stock in one go, delaying delivery dates even further.

On 16 October, Jungle said it had resolved the issue, and things should be back to normal within three weeks.

The problem for the first week was significant - 25 per cent of orders, between 2,000 and 3,000 people, were affected. PC Advisor estimates a backlog of 800 customers are still affected. ®