Peer to Peer

Taking care of logistics

Flyjac deployed a Web-centric enterprise application to conduct business with greater efficiency, says Soutiman Das Gupta.

Flyjac Logistics, a Rs 150 crore company, wanted to expand its scale of services in the country and conduct business in a more efficient manner. Its main business objectives are to introduce higher efficiency in its customers’ supply chains, and save time and money for the customers.

It realised that, to keep up the commitment to its large base of customers it had to ensure smoother flow of information. As the role of IT is strategically important to the company, it decided to deploy a Web-centric enterprise application called e-Carex.

The company can now use a centralised information database and share vital business information related to freight and logistics management with its various nationwide locations.

“Being a service-driven industry where around 70 percent of the business has to do with the movement of cargo, our guiding philosophies of customer satisfaction and self development, are largely enabled with IT,” said A V Ravikumar, Director of the company.

The need for care

“The company had earlier developed customised applications which were deployed at branches nationwide. Although the application helped to automate a number of operations, we found it difficult to centralise the information,” explained R Kumaran, Manager, Systems.

Further, deploying applications at new locations posed difficulties and needed extra manpower. Integration of the various business processes such as exports, logistics and freight management into a single manageable application platform was not possible.

The company needed to use a system which allowed real-time flow of information, which was vital for growth in the geographically dispersed company for transportation and logistics. It decided to migrate to a Web-centric integrated application platform.

Evaluating options

Flyjac began discussions and product evaluations with a number of large and medium sized solution providers, and decided to use a suite of products called e-Carex from Four Soft Limited.

The e-Carex suite comprises two solutions, namely a multi-modal freight management system (e-Carex Freight Management), and a warehouse and logistics management system (e-Carex Logistics management). A prototype of the product was deployed at Flyjac which allowed a lot of transfer of domain knowledge with the solution provider.

The e-Carex solution is Web-centric and allows customers to log into our Web site and track the movement of their shipments in real-time A V Ravikumar Director Flyjac Logistics	Although customised applications helped to automate a number of operations, we found it difficult to centralise the information R Kumaran Manager, Systems Flyjac Logistics

Designing the solution

The product was finally customised according to the Indian business environment. Rajasekhar Sajja, Senior Manager, Customer Service & Implementation at Four Soft was actively involved in the project. “The aspects included application and database server configuration, storage and bandwidth requirements, load balancing, clustering, and other software requirements,” he elaborated.

The deployment initiative also took into account a number of other aspects including the total number of registered and concurrent users, transaction volumes, data size of each transaction and utilisation of computing resources such as processing power.

Deployment begins

The solutions deployment initiative began in 2001 and was made in phases. The nation’s geography was divided into seven regions.

The company began to work on new systems in 2002. The solution architecture is in three tiers. The first tier comprises the browser for universal access, the second tier runs the applications, and the third tier comprises the database. The application interacts with the database.

The two applications in the e-Carex suite Freight Management and Logistics Management run on HP servers out of a data centre in Chennai. The network uses security solutions from Watchguard. An IT infrastructure set-up in Mumbai acts as a DR site and there are high bandwidth WAN links between various nationwide locations.

The challenges

Deployment of the solution on such a major nationwide scale gave rise to a few challenges. “We did not have problems in getting licenses and permits, but found that the cost of nationwide networking was very high. However, the prices have come down a lot lately,” explained Kumaran.

It initially took a bit of extra effort to configure the database and application servers. “Configuration of the application server was done onsite and the database server configuration issues were handled over a remote link from our facility,” explained Sajja.

The benefits

The e-Carex systems handle around 2,000 operational transactions and 4,000 financial transactions in a day. The revenue value of the transactions is around Rs 210 crore. The use of e-Carex has provided a number of benefits to Flyjac.

“The biggest benefit is that the solution is Web-centric and allows customers to log into the company’s Web site and track the movement of their shipments in real-time,” said Ravikumar.

All business-critical documents like the supplier invoice and packaging information intended for the customers can be integrated into a single portfolio against a shipment, and made available online. The complex information related to each account is simplified.

There is a single point of data entry and the system is capable of handling a large number of concurrent users. The visibility of information is extended not only to customers, but also to shippers, consignees, and agents.

Four Soft provides comprehensive support to the company for maintenance of the applications.

In future

In future, Flyjac will scale up the application as the number of transactions increases and so the workload. The company also wants to deploy a CRM system in order to provide more applications flexibility to the agents who operate from overseas.

soutimand@networkmagazineindia.com