The customer is a group of three companies, Producton, Certo and Servel, specialised in the production, distribution and sale of printer and copier supplies. All three companies are owned by the same shareholder.
Producton, the largest company in the group, operates its own retail chain, Digital Office. Certo manages the production activity (filling ink cartridges, recycling, reconditioning, etc.) and Servel handles the distribution of these products within the group and to corporate customers.
We chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV because we wanted an integrated solution, a common database for all the offices dispersed across the territory, performing all operations in real time, easy reporting of results and especially in real time!
Cristina Pisica, Executive Director
Producton, the oldest of the companies, has 15 years of experience and is the number 1 local partner for HP and Lexmark in terms of supplies distribution. The Digital Office network serves over 100,000 customers through 14 stores. The group employs around 150 people and in 2008, Producton alone generated a turnover of over 9 million Euro.
Initial situation
The Producton Group uses two IT products, both developed by local suppliers, for the management of the company. For the accounting management there was Info6, a program developed in Fox, applied on the Romanian legislation and relatively appreciated by accountants, and in addition 4D, a solution for the management of commercial relations and stocks.
The applications were not integrated but there were a number of connectors that allowed the transfer, only at the value level, of stocks and sales volume for the completion of VAT journals, accounting balances, etc. The data were not consolidated in real time and the reporting system was completely lacking.
Any analysis of the activity referred to data already 1-2 months out of date, and the workload involved in obtaining this data was very high. There were no less than 10 separate databases in each department.
This situation generates major dissatisfaction from top management, even if separately, at department level the activity could be carried out in decent conditions. The impossibility of real time monitoring of activity, operating expenses and profit margins at product /unit /customer level led the Producton group management to take the decision to purchase an ERP.
Solution
We looked for a modern solution with solid references in the market and which, along with the management of the company’s activity and resources, would offer complex business analytics functionalities.
After an analysis of the market, three vendors were short-listed, two of which were dropped for lack of dedicated production functionality and lack of flexibility in developing the optimal solution. In the end, the right solution was the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) by Elian Solutions.
Besides the standard functionalities, the CRM and Business Analytics aspects of Dynamics NAV (Navision) were also very important. Moreover, along with Dynamics NAV (Navision), the client also purchased the Microsoft Business Analytics product.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) version 5.0 with Service Pack 1 has been implemented for 52 users. In order to identify the right solution, the Producton group did a detailed internal analysis with information collected from all departments. Furthermore, an interested project manager was appointed, who knew the business of the three companies very well and thus a useful specification could be made.
We chose to work with Elian team after an analysis of the existing ERP solutions market in Romania and of the teams implementing such solutions. We asked for recommendations and received positive feedback! In addition, we appreciated that they are a young team, eager to assert themselves, but with the experience of previous successful implementations behind them. So we felt they would give us the time and advice we needed. And we were not wrong! We were convinced from the beginning that the success of implementing an ERP solution – no matter what name it bears, depends equally on the performance of the solution itself, as well as on the implementing team and our involvement!
We have developed a partnership relationship with them because the kind of business we have is a complex one that required many developments in the system and many peculiarities – so we have mutually learned from each other quite a lot both during implementation and now during maintenance and support!Cristina Pisica, Executive Director
Project development
The project started in July 2008 with an analysis phase, following the Microsoft methodology, and in January 2009 it moved to Go Live for all three companies in the group. Standard Dynamics NAV (Navision) modules were implemented for which several customizations were made according to the specifications defined by the Producton group project team.
For Producton we were interested in a major simplification of the application because the users in the store do not have advanced knowledge of PC use and that is why we asked our partners at Elian Solutions that the interface for the stores contains only the strictly necessary functionalities.
Cristina Pisica
Thus, Elian Solutions has added to the solution features such as:
- Easy matching and searching of components (cartridges in particular) and the equipment for which they are compatible. Allows you to associate a specific printer or copier model with a list of supplies in stock in the shop;
- Import offers from suppliers (based on cross-references) and compare market prices. The group works with a product nomenclature of over 18,000 references. For most of them they receive weekly or monthly price quotations. Elian Solutions has developed a tool that allows importing these price lists into Dynamics NAV (Navision) directly from Excel files and automatically maps product codes that differ according to the supplier. After importing and mapping users have the possibility to compare prices for two to six suppliers;
- Simplification of payment and collection journals. Producton’s requirement was that shop operators could perform simple payment and collection operations.
- Automation of the creation of sales price lists with percentage dependency between them. The system catalogues customers in three categories and according to these categories the price of the products is automatically generated by adding specific percentages to the reference price, without the store operator being able to intervene on the operation. Also, the daily exchange rate is automatically taken into account when defining prices;
- Automatically fill in sales forecasts according to a parameterisable calculation algorithm applied to previous sales;
- Management of the cartridge filling/refilling activity and automation of material consumption recording. A form has been defined whereby a cartridge brought for refilling receives a unique code on the basis of which the ink/toner filling process is managed, the materials consumed are downloaded from the management and invoicing is performed;
- Integration with existing cash registers in the 14 shops;
- Synchronization of the nomenclature of items, prices within the companies in the database. The single database covers the needs of the three companies based on the same item list. It is managed only within Producton after which changes are propagated to the other two companies in real time;
- Development of responsibility centres with restrictions on the management associated with other centres and different numerical series of invoices and notices for each centre. Each user in the system has an associated responsibility centre (shop or department) according to which the management, bank accounts and numeric series of notices, invoices and receipts are assigned. Thus users can only perform activities (goods receipt, unloading, transfer of goods, inventory adjustment, etc.) in the assigned responsibility centres, and documents will be associated with numbers only from the assigned range.
Benefits
Following the completion of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) implementation project and the customizations made by Elian Solutions, the Producton group of companies has achieved the objectives proposed by the specifications and has removed all the complaints related to the IT system. The most important benefit of Dynamics NAV (Navision) was the reporting system based on real and consolidated information. Directly related to this achievement, the company’s management was able to make decisions very quickly based on reports with real-time and much more detailed data and not on 1-2 months old information. The company thus obtained an efficient control tool for the whole activity, management having at its disposal reports related to profit margin on the smallest unit, associations from the smallest unit items associated with various categories of customers, sales agents, subsidiaries, etc.
By defining multiple price lists based on certain criteria, Dynamics NAV (Navision) has allowed us to customize our customer relationships.
We were thus able to eliminate invoicing errors, to respect all agreed discounts when contracting and to eliminate any unpleasant discussions on this subject.
I believe that the company’s image in the eyes of customers has improved considerably.Cristina Pisica