Hirt & Carter streamlines group reporting and forecasting with IDU-Concept since 2004.

For more than 20 years, Hirt & Carter has used IDU-Concept to hold the financial complexity of its business together — a partnership that stretches back to 2004 and shapes the way the group plans, reports, and forecasts today. With more than 60 years' experience building integrated creative, commercialisation, and marketing solutions that connect with consumers and shape shopper behaviour across omnichannel retail environments, Hirt & Carter operates nationally across South Africa's three major regions and serves clients in 14+ countries. As a Level 1 B-BBEE company with 100% Black Ownership, its credentials extend beyond technical delivery.

As the group expanded across business units and regions, its finance function carried a structural problem that growth made harder to ignore. Pulling together a single, reliable view of financial performance meant reconciling data from operations that ran at different rhythms, in different places, under different cost structures. The work was real and it was repetitive — and the ERP at the centre of it all was not built to absorb that kind of demand. It handled core transactional processing, but when the finance team needed to reconfigure a report, stress-test a forecast, or respond quickly to a shift in business conditions, the system offered little room to move.

In 2004, Hirt & Carter adopted IDU-Concept to address that problem directly. Where the ERP left gaps, IDU-Concept pulled financial data from across the group's business units into a single, consolidated view — bringing accuracy and speed to budgeting and forecasting processes that had previously demanded significant manual effort to hold together.

What sustained the relationship over the years was not consolidation alone. IDU's development cycle remained shaped by customer input, which meant the product continued to move in step with the way Hirt & Carter's business was changing — across both its manufacturing operations and an increasingly digital environment. And when the finance team ran into difficulty, support was there to meet them, whether that fell on a weekend or a public holiday. Over time, that responsiveness allowed the team to resolve issues independently, without waiting on external intervention.

Over more than 20 years, IDU-Concept has been Hirt & Carter's go-to financial management tool, saving countless hours in reporting and budgeting. Reporting cycles that had previously consumed weeks were reduced to far shorter runs, freeing the CFO and senior team to act on clean numbers rather than chase them. The finance team developed the confidence to handle platform issues independently, shifting from reliance on external support to self-sufficiency. And the group's ability to adapt — as manufacturing demands shifted and digital operations matured — remained intact throughout, without requiring a platform change.

"Hirt & Carter have been valued partners of IDU for 20 years, and it has been a privilege to be part of their journey. We appreciate their trust and loyalty in our solutions. Witnessing their growth and evolution while using our tools has been incredibly rewarding. Their feedback and engagement have been instrumental in helping us continually enhance our offerings to meet their dynamic business needs. We look forward to continuing this successful partnership and supporting Hirt & Carter in their future endeavors." – Margie Whitten, Director, IDU South Africa

"The level of support makes a huge difference, and we consider IDU a true partner rather than just an external supplier. We use IDU practically every day at Hirt & Carter, and it has revolutionised our business by streamlining reporting, budgeting, and forecasting." — Sandeepa Sewnandan, Group Financial Manager at Hirt & Carter

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