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Integrating data management at Sunrise Spices

Sunrise Spices was facing a problem, and the only way out was to track all relevant information from a single point, says Kusum Makhija.

As the operational size and geography of Sunrise Spices was expanding, the company wanted to track all relevant information from a single point by using an effective and integrated data management software. This would improve the response time and facilitate better planning of supply and production. Since the company belonged to the FMCG segment, monitoring staff performance, sales performance and the stock movement of finished goods were important processes that had to be automated.

Pre-ERP situation

Tracking and integrating information related to sales, stock and finance was a challenge. The number of transactions was large, and spread over an equally large number of suppliers, dealers, employees and product combinations. In the absence of a system, there was often confusion relating to sales order positions, dispatches, customer outstandings, credit limits, performance of executives, different territories’ sales performance, suppliers’ outstandings, stock positions, etc. Before the deployment of ebizframe, Sunrise was using a home-grown DOS-based software and a BI tool. But the software was unable to integrate information across departments and geographical locations. Further, the software was not an online application, and it required several duplicate data entries resulting in a lot of delay.

“Earlier, we had an off-the-shelf accounting system that worked more or less as a copying software and did not generate the kind of output we needed,” recalls Anoop Sharma, a director of the company.

Data integrity and consistency across locations were other major issues. The management was never clear about the actual position of the company. Adds Sharma, “Stocks could not be tracked and our finances could not be managed; cash recovery was a big hassle because of all this.”

Making a choice

Considering the supply, consumption and decision points, Sunrise wanted a Web-enabled system that could allow access from multiple locations without having to invest in heavy communication infrastructure. Ebizframe was the solution of choice as it met all of these along with several other criteria such as countrywide presence and process orientation. Ebizframe was implemented at the company in 12 months, and it has been running at Sunrise for over three years now.

The system was implemented on a Dell server with dual processor and 1 GB RAM, the OS being Windows 2000. The server is hosted in Kolkata, and now there are over 75 users spread across 20 different locations communicating via a combination of dial-up ISDN, broadband and leased lines. However, the company recently migrated to an IBM server because as the network traffic grew speed was getting affected.

Informs Sharma, “The total cost was about Rs 25 lakh, of which the software cost was approximately Rs 8 lakh while the implementation cost was around Rs 12 lakh; the rest went in hardware upgrades and employee training.”

Challenges faced

To begin with, the company faced resistance at the user level as people in the organisation were resistant to change. “People who used to have control over the information were not happy with the fact that all the information would now be public and could be accessed from remote locations,” explains Sharma.

Employee training was another important aspect since the organisation had not used anything like this before. Eastern Software Systems (ESS) provided onsite training to the employees. “It took us three months to train Sunrise employees. Discrepancies were there at the operational level as people were not comfortable with change. We had to convince them of the benefits,” comments Sanjay Aggarwala, Director, ESS.

At the product development level ESS had to do a lot of customisation because Sunrise is not a conventional client for the company. The customisation was primarily at the report level to match the business needs of Sunrise.

“Our business experiences highly seasonal demand with a lot of fluctuation in supply. Besides, we have several schemes for suppliers and customers. All this data had to be processed carefully,” recalls Sharma.

The challenge for ESS now is to match up to the growing business of the company. But Aggarwala is optimistic: “We are constantly striving to minimise the change in software and at the same time meet the maximum business needs while ensuring that the transition for users remains seamless.”

Effective integration

It took us three months to train Sunrise employees. We had to convince them of the benefits Sanjay Aggarwala Director ESS

Data integration for various departments such as sales, accounts, inventory, purchase and production has been managed by the system across various locations. All locations are making entries through dial-up/ISDN/broadband Internet connections, and are able to view the reports from their locations. The company has a good handle on area-wise sales performance and trends. This is a noteworthy achievement for an FMCG-based environment. The management now has good control on dealers, suppliers, stocks and dispatches as they have the latest figures with them all the time.

The availability of correct data has greatly reduced the stress on the working capital requirements of the company. The existing manpower is now able to do more productive work without losing time for getting reports. “According to one estimate, the deployment has helped us generate 10 percent additional revenues while customer complaints have reduced largely,” says Sharma.

Plans for BI

Sunrise is now moving this ERP to other businesses such as edible oil. ESS is also working closely with the company to help it design key performance indicators that will help gauge the company’s performance from snapshot-level reports.

“The analysis of data is something that lacks in an ERP for which we are planning to deploy a business intelligence application to work in tandem with our ERP application,” Sharma concludes.

kusum@expresscomputeronline.com