Implementing ERP solutions has always been a prime focus for major SPs across the country. As talks are on around the corner for evolving the next phase of business intelligence and implementing the same in India, ERP focus on part of the solution providers (SPs) has gained significant momentum across the nation.

In one such instance, tracking inventory across multiple domains has been a challenge in ERP solutions. It is in this realm that Sage deployed one of its ERP solutions for Bollhoff Fastenings through Across Domains.

“The key challenges for Bollhoff were tracking the inventory status across multiple warehouses, manual counting and valuation of large numbers of very small products, attaining visibility into credit history during repeat customer billing and generating monthly reports comprising of data from multiple databases in the prescribed international format,” said SP Agarwal, Director, Across Domain.

Bolhoff Fastenings is involved in import and sale of fasteners and assembly products to automobile majors, auto­mobile ancillary units and industrial machinery majors and vendors, through their head office in New Delhi and their branch offices and representatives in Benguluru and Pune. To address this problem, Bollhoff deployed Sage ERP solution, Sage Accpac.

Bolhoff products imported from the parent company arrive at the head office where the purchase order is generated. It is from there that they are allocated to multiple locations for warehousing and storage. Since the there is a variety of products and some of them are very small, manual counting and valuation of stock, tracking of inventory status and material movement across multiple warehouses became an impossible task leading to errors and delays in order fulfilment. Sage Accpac offered a real time view into stock availability so orders were only accepted if there was enough stock, and re-order if the level falls below economic order quantity. Once the order is registered, it is automatically shipped wherein the ordered quantity is deducted from stock and an invoice is generated. Sage Accpac also allows personnel to identify and distinguish slow moving goods and take a definite action such as sale or return, at the same time maintaining separate stock of samples and saleable products.

As Bolhoff has several repeat customers, a complete visibility into customer history, special rates offered and credit limit status is essential at the time of order processing and fulfilment. Sage Accpac features the application known as approval or sub-approvals, for customers who have exceeded their credit limit. In such a case, the approval of the senior executive is required for such orders to proceed to shipment, thereby saving time and eliminating errors and reorders. The deployment also prevented sale of samples during stock crunch and helped in generating inventory turnover ratio report.

Additonally, the reporting tool in Sage Accpac, is capable of incorporating predefined formulas to dynamically extract data from the database to generate reports in the required format. This solved Bolhoff's MIS related issues of collating data from multiple sources and presenting reports on operating costs, net monthly sales, stock and total outstanding balance in predefined international formats. Its easy-to-use and format also provided the MD with instant visibility into the company's profit and loss and operating costs for any given month, on the basis of which he can estimate budgets for the future.

Taking 60 days to complete the project, the solution generated numerous benefits to the customer, namely, real-time view of stock availability and its stock valuations for correctly calculating the unit cost and customer credit history. This has resulted in reduced errors, competitive sales price and re-orders during the sales process. Reports are generated automatically in the required format using predefined formulas. Consolidated view of company finances enables better budgetary estimations.

Commenting on the implementation of the solution and reinforcing his contentment over the project, Keswani concluded, “Bolhoff has implemented a 3-user package of Sage Accpac comprising of system manager, general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, order entry, purchase order, transactional and optional fields, multi-currency as the major modules. We are satisfied with Sage Accpac ERP and the implementation and support services provided by Across Domain.”

Avishek Rakshit
(avishekr@cybermedia.co.in)

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