Super Cheap Auto drives up IT budget

The Super Cheap Auto Group has almost doubled its IT budget for the first six months of the financial year as it rolls out a customer relationship management system across its three retail brands.

The brands included Super Cheap Auto, Boating Camping Fishing (BCF) and Goldcross Cycles.

The firm's chief financial officer Gary Carroll said that for the six months ended December 26, the company spent $3.5 million on technology compared to $1.9 million in the same period in 2008.

"We are ramping up our investment in a couple of key areas around our information systems, one being customer relationship management where it's part of an ongoing strategy to quality, more detailed information about our customers," Carroll said.

"The second area of investment is in our inventory system to enable ongoing improvements in terms of supply chain efficiency and forecasting capabilities.

"We've also invested in internal communications by putting terminals in each of our stores to enable much faster communication to the store network."