Case Study: SAP Business Transformation

Key Challenges

• Replace aging IT systems to expedite global manufacturing and supply chain management
• Provide clear window into financial, customer relationship management, and supply chain operations
• Enable real-time communication with global suppliers
• Improve forecasting by providing better financial data
• Streamline AR processes
• Reduce backlog and increase customer satisfaction

Why SAP Was Selected

• Only vendor with a comprehensive solution
• Built-in, extensive best practices
• Globally scalable application platform
• Trusted implementation partner with extensive expertise
• Ease of integration with SAP® and non-SAP systems
• Limited need for customization

Implementation Best Practices

• Executive leadership and strong governance
• Commitment to adopt SAP best practices
• Program alignment to critical business objectives
• Rapid collaborative decision making
• Focus on employee training

Low Total Cost of Ownership

• Single global instance of SAP software
• Rapid global deployment within 12 months
• Centralized management of global IT operations
• Rapid growth without comparable IT cost increase
• Minimal IT team supporting deployment (5 people)
• Less need for custom work with expanded functionality

Financial and Strategic Benefits

• Ability to respond to market conditions more flexibly and quickly
• Greater visibility of demand changes
• Ability to manage up to 50% variance in supply forecast
• Wider and more diverse customer base (e-commerce)
• Real-time analyses and reporting
• Ability to track individual customer purchases
• Increased availability of financial, supply chain, and customer data
• Higher fulfillment rates

Tumi Improves Global Operations with SAP® Business Suite

Tumi Inc. distributes its luxury brand of travel, business, and lifestyle accessories through multiple channels around the globe. When seeking to replace its homegrown IT solution with one that could keep up with its plans for expansion, Tumi began a search for a quality, state-of-the-art software solution. The company needed a clear window into its financial, customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain operations to improve forecasting, inventory control, and customer service. It also wanted to move into e-commerce, expand its sales, warehousing, and distribution operations globally, and improve its ability to manage importation of goods from overseas. Tumi selected the SAP® Business Suite family of business applications to reach its goals.

Seamless Implementation

Tumi implemented the SAP ERP and SAP CRM applications and the SAP NetWeaver® platform, including the SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence component and the knowledge management functionality found in the SAP NetWeaver Portal component. The implementation was completed without a hitch, thanks to a cooperative team environment, Tumi's adherence to a carefully blueprinted and executed implementation plan, and the company's commitment to leverage best business practices – even if that meant changing its ways. A substantial amount of reengineering took place, including creating companywide standards, replacing disparate business processes, and streamlining a multitude of protocols.

Single View, Broad Perspective

With the SAP software, Tumi gained a single view across its supply chain and its retail and consumer customer relationships, enabling the company to improve planning, forecasting, and logistics; shorten product-to-market cycle time; and improve gross margin performance. Tumi managers can now easily access and analyze information and share data globally. A desktop dashboard lets them conduct detailed and up-to-date profitability analyses based on real-time data.

Improved Access to Data – Improved Manufacturing

Currently running one instance of SAP ERP, Tumi manages its global manufacturing operations as if all the plants were in its backyard. Tumi is able to optimize its manufacturing operations by closely managing raw-material suppliers. It is also able to provide its manufacturers and retail customers with accurate information on stock levels and changes in the marketplace. This means, for example, that Tumi manufacturers can adjust manufacturing operations accordingly, enabling them to save time and money. Overall, Tumi has improved the accuracy of its warehouse management processes – enabling it to gain greater inventory control, significantly reducing stock levels and increasing inventory turns.

Closing the Loop for Customers

To improve customer service, Tumi has linked its retailers to its SAP CRM application, giving them instant access to information regarding pricing and product availability. The company also uses the CRM software to track individual consumer purchases. This helps Tumi follow market trends and respond to customers' changing needs.

Future Plans

With the SAP software as a base, Tumi is planning on enhancing its relationships with all its suppliers by launching a number of business-to-business strategies. Significant business expansion plans are in the works as well – supporting more diverse product lines and further geographical expansion. Thanks to standardized processes and a common IT platform, Tumi now has the capability – and flexibility – for continued growth and success.

Reference:http://www.thehackettgroup.com

Regards,

Team Delphi

Operational Benefits

A Turn Around Through Digital Marketing

This is a business case of Ford:

Consider Ford’s 2009 Fiesta Movement campaign, used to prepare for the car’s reintroduction in the U.S. It required joint efforts among marketing, communications, and the C-suite. Ford decided to lend 100 Fiestas for six months to recipients who would use social media to discuss their experiences with the cars in an authentic, direct way. It held an online contest to select candidates, carefully choosing drivers with large social media followings. To further reduce uncertainty, it required them to regularly produce content on themed “missions” (for example, volunteerism) and designed a schedule for postings. Within six months the drivers had posted more than 60,000 items, which garnered millions of clicks, including more than 4.3 million YouTube views. The $5 million campaign created a prelaunch brand awareness rate of 37% among Millennials, generated 50,000 sales leads to new customers, and prompted 35,000 test-drives—a level of results that might be expected from a traditional campaign costing tens of millions of dollars.

Reference: hbr.org

For more, you can always discuss with Mr. Brijesh Kumar Pandey

Regards,
Team Delphi

How Digital Marketing Helps

Nowadays everyone wants to know about Digital Marketing. It is the way where you can promote your brand or business by getting other people to do the talking for you. It involves the connecting people through sending content such as emails, comments, blogs, social networking posts, tweets and so on. The benefits of Digital Marketing are usually underestimated by most of us, who have not seen its true potential to grow in the network. 
If you are on the hunt for cohesive and non-traditional marketing strategies then there are advantages of going digital like it has potential to reach mass amounts of people in less time, welcomes interaction from your audience, it provides additional branding and promotion for your company or product, most of all it is not expensive. And through Social Media you can easily measure success of your business. 

Regards,
Rashmi Chauhan
Alumni DSDM 

Case Study: British Airways benefited by Digital Marketing

Objectives

Bigmouthmedia’s search account for British Airways has pushed the boundaries of campaign integration while synchronising the airline’s online strategy with its promotions and sales processes. The net result has been to break new ground in terms of what can be achieved with a leading edge digital marketing strategy.

After a successful track record of multi-channel campaigns, bigmouthmedia and British Airways partnered again to launch an ambitious search campaign aimed at:

• Creating content-rich landing pages that would rank well organically for key destinations and provide a high quality score for paid search
• Reducing PPC spend for expensive “flights to ” keywords
• Ensuring PPC was used tactically to drive incremental sales volume

Our Solution

1. Aggressive Landing Page Strategy

Bigmouthmedia focused on content development with the creation of new landing pages packed with destination-specific information. The pages were attractive, unique, rich in keywords and valuable to both visitors and search engines. In addition to being fundamentally sound from an SEO perspective, the pages provided a clear path to sale in an attempt to increase the conversion rate for the competitive generic keywords which would be driving the traffic to the new pages.

The resulting 400% increase in rankings for “flights to” keywords meant that paid search spend was reduced substantially for the generic keywords which were now ranking well. This enabled campaign budgets to be focussed on more cost effective longer tail terms and other destinations where BA had less of a search presence.

2. Implementation of a Unique Bid Management System

The improved rankings in SEO coupled with the clients’ need to build business information such as seat availability into their online strategy led to the creation of a PPC bid management model that split all BA's routes into three tiers to ensure budget was spent as eectively as possible. The tier model was essentially used as a system to prioritize routes which had low SEO rankings and high seat availability. This ensured that PPC was driving incremental sales and not cannibalizing other channels where sales would have been captured regardless.

According to this innovative model, if a route is identified as likely to sell out regardless of PPC activity, it is automatically placed in the low priority Tier 3 section for PPC – which means adverts will appear in a low position within the search results.

A finely-tuned tier model has many advantages as it:

• Ensures there is a correct budget balance between PPC and SEO investment
• Minimises cannibalisation between channels
• Helps design PPC campaigns that are a lot more tactical and strategic
• Focuses on incremental sales, not traffic
• Maximises the return on investment of online marketing spend

3. Enhanced Focus on Reporting and Analytics

Despite the numerous advances in online marketing, there still are very few companies correctly embracing reporting and analytics. In most cases duplication across channels abounds, and few companies truly understand that to ensure the success of an online marketing campaign it is necessary to take a holistic view covering all channels.

In this respect, the British Airways campaign stays well ahead of the pack with an integrated tracking system that carefully compares each of the online channels and runs advanced exposure to conversion reports to identify all the user touch points before a conversion is made. This has enabled crucial analysis that has highlighted the relationship between search marketing and other online channels such as affiliates and display advertising.

Results

• 31% reduction in paid search CPA over the last 12 months
• 11% increase in PPC ROI over this period
• 87% reduction in PPC spend on “flights to ” keywords
• 18% increase in paid search conversion rates over the same period
• 400% increase in number one ranking positions for “flights to ” keywords
• Top 3 rankings for terms such as “flights to New York” and “flights to London”
• 3% increase in overall traffic share for British Airways

Note: All results are December 2008 to February 2010.

Reference : http://www.bigmouthmedia.com

Regards,

Delphi School of Digital Marketing

Facebook: Not a fun anymore

After Face Time with Buffett, Hathaway Uses FB for Sales

Insurer offers 7.5% discount for those who announce purchase of policy on their Facebook wall

SHILPY SINHA MUMBAI 

    Investment guru Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is giving its second-biggest marketing push in the country in association with Facebook after the impact of free audience with Buffett for policy holders hosted in 2011 wanes. 
Buffett’s insurance brokerage unit in India, Berkshireinsurance.com, is offering a 7.5% discount for those who publicise their purchase of motor insurance policy through web on their Facebook wall. 
With this, it can theoretically reach out to 60 million Facebook users in India at almost no marketing cost, even as the social media network seeks to raise revenues through advertisements. “We are trying to publicise through word of mouth,” said Arun Balakrishnan, CEO, Berkshireinsurance-.com. “One-third of the people buying insurance online are opting to share the link on Facebook. It improves our sales.” 
Since the hosting of Buffett in India, Berkshireinsurance.com has been lying low about pushing its business. BerkshireInsurance.com is a licensed corporate agent of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, a joint venture between the Bajaj family and Germany’s Allianz. 
A policy for insuring a one-year-old Honda City with similar conditions costs . 11,917 with Tata-AIG General and . 13,000 with ICICI Lombard. With Berkshire, the cost comes to . 11,595. 
But rivals are neither worried, nor do they intend to counter this move as they fear no immediate threat to their market position. 
“Our perspective is that pricing does not play an important role,” said Karan Chopra, head of retail business at HDFC Ergo. “It is a convenient platform and for customers to see how they want to engage with a company.” 
Indian motor insurance customers stick to the original insurer since companies are alert when it comes for renewal. Also, they get the benefit of lower premium if there are no claims in the previous year. 
Berkshireinsurance.com started operations in October 2011 with motor insurance. It later got into travel insurance. It will soon start selling life insurance and home insurance products through the online channel. 
Online medium is not new for non-life insurance companies. But companies have been able to register 1-2% sales through this channel. 
shilpy.sinha@timesgroup.com 
FUNNY BUSINESS A man wanted to buy some insurance for his car, so he went to the insurance company and asked for the list. First, there was an antifire policy, which has a $200 premium. Then, there was anti-theft at $150 premium. At the end, he noticed that there was an anti-fire and anti-theft policy for only $50! He asked the receptionist, ‘Why in the world do you price the policy for two problems at less than that for one problem?’ So, the receptionist replied, “Because nobody steals a burnt car.”


Reference: http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ETNEW&BaseHref=ETM/2012/10/12&PageLabel=10&EntityId=Ar01000&ViewMode=HTML

For more details always mail me on: dsdm@delphicomputech.com

Regards,
Brijesh Kumar Pandey

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Now let’s look in detail at the benefits of digital marketing:

Boost Online Brand Visibility

As consumer use of digital media has grown rapidly – from search engines to Facebook – companies and organisations need to invest in growing their brand online.

Save money – improve marketing spend efficiency

Back in the early 20^th Century, a leading businessman once said ‘you know you are wasting half your marketing budget, you just don’t know what half’? Well now businesses can gain a much better idea of how effective their marketing spend is through online channels. Online marketing methods such as Google Advertising, SEO, email newsletters and social media all feature great data insights so you can measure your marketing spend and find out what your return on investment is!

Improve customer retention

Online media allow businesses to significantly improve customer retention and re-market to customers. With email newsletters you can update your current customers on new products, sales and news about your products and services. Email marketing is one of the most popular online marketing methods because it’s so successful at encouraging customers to take actions – including purchases.

Become more globally focussed

Targeting people and consumers from around the globe who want to buy your products or services has very distinct benefits compared to an over-reliance on local markets.

Internet marketing strategies including search engine optimisation and email marketing and online channels such as Linked In allow companies to reach wider and more diverse markets. Ultimately if you are targeting new markets then your main objective is to drive sales. Sales software, use of online affiliates and internet retailing in particular has really opened up global retailing opportunities.

Learn from Data Insights

As a business you need to measure how successful your website and marketing activity are. Free web analytics tool such as Google Analytics allow you to test the performance of your website so you can find out the volume of visitors and what they are doing on the site. By analysing this data you can start to learn valuable information including:

· The most popular / unpopular pages on your websites

· How engaging your websites is with visitors

· Which geographic areas your visitors are coming from

· The main sources for your internet traffic – social media sites, search engines

· Impact of marketing and advertising campaigns

Next Steps

Every business and organisation is at a different point in terms of their online marketing use. However many are at the point where they have limited knowledge and use of online marketing channels. I recommend that businesses and organisations that are at the beginner’s stage look at three areas:

· Review Business and Marketing Objectives

· Draft an online marketing strategy

· Resourcing

Review Business and Marketing Objectives

Identify key organisational or business objectives that could be achieved / approved through online marketing. These will differ according to the type of business or organisation and might include the following:

B2B

· Grow exports in target markets

· Promote brand / spokespersons online

B2C

· Sell more online – through business website and third-party sites

· Promote brand online

· Increase customer engagement

Public Sector

· Protect and promote the organisation online

· Engage with stakeholders through online and social media

· Gain feedback on services and initiatives

Develop an Online Marketing Plan

Although there is no harm in testing different online channels, if you want to make the most of your online presence you need to plan and produce a suitable strategy. In essence this process isn’t really any different from traditional marketing planning and you might want to consider some fundamental areas such as:

• What do you want to achieve online – sales, brand promotion, etc.?
• Target markets
• Online methods (website, internet advertising, online PR, etc.)
• Measurement (web analytics)

Resourcing

Resources remain another critical part of digital planning and you might want to consider the 3Ms: men (and women), money and minutes.

The most common issue faced by companies when implementing an internet marketing campaign is whether to outsource or insource. Outsourcing remains a popular choice as internal marketing personal often lack the specialist expertise to manage online marketing tools. One recent development is the move towards bringing in online marketing specialists who can provide practical and targeted expertise in online campaigns rather than web designers and traditional marketing companies who often lack distinct digital marketing skills.

Reference: http://paulmcgarrity.hubpages.com/hub/Making-a-Business-Case-for-Digital-Marketing

For further inquiries, mail on: dsdm@delphicomputech.com

Digital Marketing: Boost your Business efficiently

The following business case is designed to help business owners, directors, marketing managers and public sector managers learn more about the merits of digital marketing and make the case for increased investment in digital marketing.

Businesses and organisations are now faced with several trends that will continue to have a huge impact on how they market and communicate effectively.

· Changing Media - The media and marketing environment is rapidly changing. New media, ranging from search engines, social media to mobile present genuine opportunities for companies and organisations to reach out to more audiences and connect with their customers.

· Changing Marketing – You need to reach and influence consumers who are using online channels. So your marketing needs to include a greater level of online activity.

· Changing buying habits – Growing customer trends for researching products and services online and the growth in ecommerce mean you need to promote your brand online and sell online.

· Budget Pressures – Businesses and public sector organisations are under pressure to reduce marketing spend, gain greater value for money and improve overall marketing effectiveness. Online marketing can help reduce marketing inefficiencies and save money.

The Case for Digital Marketing

The very rapid changes in media and technology combined with the current economic downturn have presented distinct opportunities and challenges for business.

New media habits require new marketing approaches

Businesses understand that they need to boost their marketing profile and attract new leads and sales. However as consumer media habits are changing so rapidly with the rise of search engines and social media sites such as Facebook, we understand that our marketing has to change too.

Digital technology presents genuine opportunities to revamp our marketing, customer services and sales.

Reference: http://paulmcgarrity.hubpages.com/hub/Making-a-Business-Case-for-Digital-Marketing

For further interaction, mail your queries on: dsdm@delphicomputech.com

Regards,

Brijesh Kumar Pandey

Digital Marketing ( Business Review )

HDFC Bank Uses Technology-led Marketing to Keep Costs Low

RAHUL SACHITANAND MUMBAI 

Amarketer who helped revitalise the sales of chocolate brands such as Picnic, Perk and 5-Star for Cadbury and launched India’s first end-toend portal to buy insurance for ICICI Lombard, is now busy changing the way the country’s largest issuer of credit cards and auto loans markets itself. Kartik Jain, 42, executive vice-president and head marketing at HDFC Bank, has been pushing result-oriented local and digital marketing since he joined India’s second-largest private bank last year. 

“We want our marketing campaigns to result in at least thrice the revenue they cost,” says Jain, an IIT and IIM alum. He launched some 4,000 campaigns and 400 analytical solutions (a 40% y-o-y increase) in the past year to bring in more customers to the bank and aggressively stepped up its digital presence to increase business from this channel by over 60%. Jain, a keen trekker who has run three half marathons (and wishes he had time for more), is pushing his colleagues to shift away from a centralised marketing function, and think local by setting up local marketing teams to cater to specific needs of a community or locality. “I want our marketers to focus on the catchment areas around branches and run campaigns to suit residents or businesses there,” he says. 

His result-oriented approach is something his rivals and industry watchers admire. “He’s an objective-driven marketer who has been able to effectively leverage technology and digital programmes,” says Sanjay Jain, chief marketing officer of Reliance Capital. HDFC’s Jain stands out for his focus on return on investment and not spread across many hard-tomeasure campaigns, he says. Ajay Kelkar, COO of customer relationship solutions firm Hansa Cequity, says Kartik Jain uses technology and digital media more effectively than 
most of his peers. “This gives the bank an opportunity to get one view of the customer and, in a muted economy, opens up better opportunities to cross sell products,” he says. 

As marketers become more concerned with cost, the idea of highly visible above-the-line advertising rarely appeals to Jain. “We haven’t done a big-ticket campaign in 2-3 years,” he says. Instead, the ads will be targeted, like its Infineon credit card ads pegged at big spenders. 

While he wouldn't disclose his marketing budget, Jain says HDFC Bank spends less than one-fifth of it on abovethe-line activities, with the rest reserved for below-theline campaigns. “Marketing is about customer engagement that leads to measurable business results,” he says. 

While it’s a challenge to get close enough to customers to garner key insights for new campaigns, marketers like Jain are increasingly under pressure to reduce spends in a slowing economy. 

Jain is leaning heavily on digital campaigns to proselytise HDFC Bank. Under him, the bank’s website has become the most visited private bank website and the most responsive bank on Facebook, according to a survey by Social Bakers in May 2012. 

“With increasing penetration of internet and mobile, digital marketing has become an inexorable element of marketing-…this is especially true in the case of financial services, where products and services cannot be distributed efficiently without the use of technology,” Jain says. Parag Rao, who heads HDFC Bank’s credit card business, says while Jain’s overview across the bank’s businesses has allowed him to synergise marketing campaigns, his data analytics team is a welcome bonus. 

“We undertake a lot of customer analytics across our different businesses and since Kartik has an insight across them we have visibility of their spends and can target them with specific products,” Rao says.

Reference: http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ETNEW&BaseHref=ETM/2012/09/21&PageLabel=4&EntityId=Ar00401&ViewMode=HTML

Delphi School of Digital Marketing ( DSDM ) : Learning to Cost effective Marketing Strategies

Delphi Computech Pvt. Ltd. is launching a first of its’ kind school of Digital Marketing (Delphi School of Digital Marketing) on September 24, 2012. The training will be imparted by faculties who are experts in social & digital media marketing.  


Importance of Social Media Marketing


Now-a-days, social media is one of the biggest means of communication being used all over the world. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more are utilised for professional purposes such as marketing and publicising one’s product and service. It enables a person to increase his/her professional and personal network. Social Networking Sites are beneficial to reach out to a massive audience just at a click.  The Digital Marketing helps individuals to connect to global customers and market his/her products. It proves very useful for brand imaging and development along with very cost efficient marketing alternatives. This course basically aims at increasing one’s global network and makes it easy for him to market himself as well as his product/service. It helps to improve one’s basic/professional online branding and people network using social media techniques. The course highlights social media marketing to increase an organisation’s website traffic. The use of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and such others for marketing, helps to generate more qualified leads in a lesser cost.


Why Delphi School Of Digital Marketing?


Delphi Computech has been practicing social media marketing very successfully. Due to this experience, the company has developed a strong expertise in it. Delphi School of Digital Marketing aims to train and take aspiring individuals deep into the world of marketing through social media. Delphi also provides live projects for students so that they get actual experience of marketing through a digital medium. The power packed program is sure to prove useful to candidates who pursue this course and make them knowledgeable and well prepared to exceed in this area. The students who complete the program successfully will be rewarded with a certificate for the same.


Eligibility


All students, professionals from any background, preferably Sales and Marketing, interested to explore and develop their skills in Digital Marketing should pursue this course.


For more information please write to dsdm@delphicomputech.com

http://www.delphicomputech.com/DSDM/dsdm.html

SAP Case Studies: Lupin ( A Pharma Case )

Lupin has virtually doubled in size in the last three years. The SAP ERP implementation done by the company in 2003 has helped the company streamline its business processes by enhancing connectivity and accessibility.

Making way for SAP

Lupin, with its operations spanning across five plants and 30 depots was facing a problem of lack of connectivity within its contact points with its Foxpro based system. "They were not working online and it used to take almost ten days to get the month end sales figure collated, compiled and presented to the marketing head. At that point of time, the decision to go for ERP was taken," says Suneel Aradhye, GM, IT. The first ERP system selected had the localised versions, wherein, every location kept on verifying it as per its own requirements. However, it was due to the lack of a centralised cohesive strategy that the ERP project failed. To acquire a centralised control, in 2001-02, the company decided to go for a bigger and better ERP.

The right choice

"There are two approaches for selection. One is to pick up the best of the breed in each area and then integrate them together. Other is to pick up the overall best product available in the market," says Aradhye. Lupin opted for SAP's ERP solution based on the parameters of technical support offered by them and the degree of customisation that can be achieved in terms of complying with the current taxation requirements and accounting standards to suit Indian conditions.

The big bang

As the first step, the company implemented Lotus notes, complete VSAT network and Lotus workflows. Before the SAP ERP (version 4.6c) roll out, all disjoined systems and locations were brought online in terms of connectivity. Lupin selected the big bang approach for the implementation, where the legacies were cut off and all the functions were moved on the ERP system from day one. "While implementing in a phased manner, people still have doubts about the success of the system. Therefore, they keep working on both the systems simultaneously. Thus, it is better to cut off the old systems and straight away migrate to the new set of systems," opines Aradhye.

All the business processes from materials, production and quality management, up to sales were covered under the implementation. The discussions and debates held between the heads of all functions led to the preparation of a document of current processes. This was followed by preparation of a blue print document to map these in SAP. Approval from the core team led to configuring the system, where each of the processes was tested independently. The implementation was done by IBM. The initial investment went in the house of Rs 15 crore, which included aspects like upgradation of network, hardware installations and cost of implementation.

SAP keeps on issuing patches that take care of issues like bug fixing, any enhancement in the current products, as well as legal changes within the organisation and in the country. These changes get applied in the organisation on regular basis to keep their version up to date.

Overcoming challenges

The user training was a major challenge. When the company went live, many of the functions were not covered by any kind of computer systems at all. Thus, the training started from the basics of computers and its applications.

SAP established a help desk comprising of ten people from the core team of 50. With the help of this team, several rounds of end user trainings were held, even though the initial training was done by IBM. This was accompanied with regular interactions and discussion sessions with core users in every function. This help desk also took care of master data supervision, day to day trouble shooting and configuring new business processes coming into system. To cope up with the changes taking place in the legal environment, Lupin took the SAP support, which comprised of patches.

Benefits galore

Since the time of implementation of the ERP package, Lupin has not required additional staff in the service areas like accounting, IT, finance and HR, although the company has virtually doubled in size. "We have to give some credit to ERP, wherein, with the help of the same set of people, we are able to handle much larger volume," opines Aradhye.

The ERP implementation also enhanced accessibility to available information. For instance, contrary to the earlier situation, even a sales manager has access to real time data with respect to the inventory levels. There is also an enhancement in online connectivity through the online accounting system. This has helped in tracking the inventory levels very closely and helped in materials planning as only the required raw materials can be ordered, resulting in cost saving to a large extent.

Reference: http://www.expresspharmaonline.com

You can always reach with your queries on brijesh@delphicomputech.com

Regards,

Delphi Computech

SAP ACE AWARDS FOR PUBLIC SERVICES -2012

THE WINNERS: SAP ACE 2012 –PUBLIC SERVICES

S.No	Award Category	Name of Organisation
1	Best Run in Finance	Directorate of Naval Plans
2	Best Run in HR and Payroll	The Singareni Collieries Company Ltd
3	Best Run in Procurement	Airports Authority of India
4	Best Run in Customer Relationship Management & Public Services	Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai
5	Best Run in Database Computing	Central Board of Excise and Customs
	Best Run in Database Computing	Centre For Railway Information Systems
6	Best Run in Utilities - Generation	Indraprastha Power Generation Co Ltd
7	Best Run in Utilities - Transmission	Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company Ltd
8	Best Run in Utilities - Distribution	Central Power Distribution Company of A.P.Ltd
9	Best Run Public Sector Undertaking	Bharat Electronics Ltd
	Best Run Public Sector Undertaking	Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers Ltd
10	Special Recognition - Creative and Innovative Usage of SAP	Mormugao Port Trust
11	Special Recognition - Most Challenging Implementation	National Aluminium Company Ltd
12	Special Recognition - Turnaround Story	The Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore Ltd
13	SAP University Alliances - Special Recognition for Excellence in Higher Education & Research	Shri Vile Parle Kelavani Mandal
	SAP University Alliances - Special Recognition for Excellence in Higher Education & Research	University of Petroleum and Energy Studies

Reference: sap.com

Keep us visiting for more updates.

Regards,
Brijesh Kumar Pandey
Online Media-Manager

SAP Case Studies: Eco-friendly energy company taps ERP

A player in the energy sector, Suzlon Energy deals in alternative energy—wind power to be precise. It operates across multiple locations where wind energy is available to be tapped. Integrating information across these remote energy generating sites is essential for the company. It has deployed SAP ERP to integrate information from different sites and streamline business processes across the company.

The company was using a legacy system developed in Visual Basic, which did not integrate information from remote locations. Sometimes in order to establish its operations and wind turbines Suzlon wanted to put together information pertaining to project planning and procurement of materials while establishing a particular site. For instance a large number of cranes were required to carry material to a proposed site. In case of a failure near a remote site, work at the site used to slow down and affect project completion cycle time if the information of the breakdown was not generated almost immediately.

Moreover information pertaining to the maintenance of existing sites, for instance the amount of electricity being generated by each site, was also not available on a real time basis. In certain places there was no integration as the information had to be sent in the form of manual sheets and it was a cumbersome process to compiling the data. This manual data then had to be integrated with the data collected from other sites. The company has its machines installed at some 228 locations across the country, which includes remote sites like Satara—-where the machines are situated near a plateau.

At the same time the company was growing and expanding the number of sites on a regular basis. It also wanted to go public. Dr VV Rao, group head IT, Suzlon Group explains, “Due to the legacy system with no proper integration of information across departments and remote locations there was a total disconnect between different sites, the corporate headquarters and branches which was becoming a big hassle for the management of the company. This problem manifested across different functions and resulted in delays.” Closing books and generating financial statements was taking an unacceptably long time. Accounts were not being closed as per the scheduled dates due to inaccuracies in the data and also because there was no information integration. The management did not have real-time information on inventory or cash flows.

There was a strong push towards adopting a standardised ERP package to meet these challenges. Suzlon Energy began an evaluation exercise to evaluate different ERP packages. SAP, Oracle and IFS were evaluated during the evaluation exercise. At the end of the evaluation process Suzlon decided to go ahead with SAP. Rao says, “We were looking for better project management capabilities and a long product road map, which SAP was giving us. Additionally SAP Labs keeps on bringing new innovations and most importantly SAP software is inclined towards the Indian Taxation system which no other system offers. Suzlon felt that the SAP package was offering better bandwidth utilisation when compared to other packages.”

A complex implementation

The scope of the implementation can be gauged by the fact that a total of 172 people including the implementation team from IBM Global Services were involved in the process. Suzlon Energy purchased a complete suite of modules of SAP ERP 4.7 with modules such as Finance and Control, Sales and Distribution, Materials Management, Sales and Distribution, Project Management, Plant Maintenance and Quality Management, HRM, Training and Event Management, Customer Service, PLM Management, CRM and Business Intelligence. Rao says, “We chose IBM Global Services as the implementation partner due to its expertise in handling complex implementations spanning multiple locations.”

The company incorporated the best practices of the solution as it is and to ensure manageability of the solution in the long run avoiding extensive customisation for this reason. The implementation exercise, which began in May 2004, was completed in November 2004 with a simultaneous rollout of SAP ERP at 228 sites. Over time the rollout of ERP is extended to new sites. The company is using around 900 user licenses of SAP and the project cost has been estimated to be around Rs 4.5 crores including the cost of the package, hardware, implementation cost and training. Rao says, “There was total support from the management and we had realised that there was no way we could grow without an integrated system that gave sufficient impetus and drive to all concerned.”

Snapshot
The Company	Suzlon Energy is a wind energy systems and solutions company
The Solution	SAP ERP R/3 4.7. It recently migrated to SAP ECC 6.0
Operating System	AIX
Database	Oracle 9i
Servers	IBM pSeries p650 dual processor as development server
Modules Implemented	Finance and Control, Sales and Distribution, Materials Management, Sales and Distribution, Project Management, Plant Maintenance and Quality Management, HRM, Training and Event Management, Customer Service, PLM Management, CRM and Business Intelligence
Cost of the project	Rs 4.5 crores including cost of the package and the hardware along with the implementation and training.
Implementation Partner	IBM Global Services
User Licenses	900 user licenses

Smoother financial operations

Ever since the ERP package went live information integration is complete and it is readily available in real time. The ERP package has also improved financial processes as the official financial balance sheet incorporating data from all the sites is ready by March 31st. Earlier a lot of manual data had to be compiled from different sites and it used to delay the closing of accounts.

After the ERP deployment, financial planning has improved considerably. Rao says, “Projects are planned much better as the errors are detected immediately and can be rectified almost in real time. The package has also led to better project management as any project related information can be passed on to the concerned site office and if any case of delays in procurement of project related equipment or delay in execution of any project related work it can be immediately passed on to the site office through the ERP system.” With all this information proactive action can be taken to tackle situations.

Suzlon Energy has also been able to have a business process simulation analysis through the ERP package and is able to analyse the impact that a strategic decision will have on its business. For instance if a particular project site is changed then it can gauge what impact it will have on the energy generation capabilities of that site and in turn the energy generation capabilities of that particular zone. Suzlon Energy also has a single window interface; the package has helped the company in generating 324 important parameters related to its business and sites on a single screen. The ERP system has also resulted in better inventory management and invoicing is integrated with the rest of the processes and a change is immediately reflected in the system and invoice verification has become streamlined. This has led to faster completion and maintenance of projects and has paved the way for the steady growth of the company.

Reference: http://www.expresscomputeronline.com

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