Customer Case Studies
Precision Products Manufacturer – ERP Readiness Audit, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Post Implementation Audit, Goal / Budget setting & Key Requirement Discovery
About Customer
The customer is a highly technology focused group engaged in precision products manufacture for the Indian automotive industry. Founded in 1974, the group has grown and earned a reputation as a “Technology Player” for producing precision auto components for transmissions, engines, brakes and other applications catering to two wheelers, passenger cars, multi‐utility vehicles, sports, light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles and tractors. Since its inception three decades ago, the customer has created a niche for themselves in the industry by adopting newer technologies, optimally utilizing its production capacities and adhering to stringent quality checks. Its major product, synchronizer rings, stands testimony to the above with many first for the Indian industry in terms of "forged tooth profile", warm forged steel synchronizer rings, dual and triple cone applications, alternate friction material options etc.
Business Situation
The customer has implemented Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Version 5.0 SP1) for its Financial & SCM operations but hasn’t fully realized the benefits of such ERP investment.
The customer now requested VELCOM to provide the services for following:
- Goal Setting / Budget Planning
- Business Requirement Documentation (including Gap-fit)
- Help the customer to decide on
- Either to continue with existing implementation or Re-Implementation
- If Re-Implementation, NAV 5 or NAV 2009
The customer engaged VELCOM to assist them in taking the above decision and asked VELCOM to conduct the ERP Post-Implementation & Readiness Audit.
Solution
Velcom team conducted comprehensive sessions with the customer team covering various operations like Finance; Sales; Purchase; Inventory; Manufacturing; Maintenance & Quality and completed the ERP Post‐Implementation & Readiness Audit. Post the audit, VELCOM submitted the report with detailed observations on the company status as follows:
- Goal Setting / Budget Planning
- Key Business Requirements Identification for the NAV Project
- Performance Problems exist. Certain posting processes take more time, which results in restricting other users posting their transactions. LAN Connection itself is slow. This could be due to the following among other things:
- Lot of customization have been done on the NAV Modules & reports but were not used. Examples,
- Customized Maintenance module exist in the system but not used
- Customer part number is captured (through customization) in the Item Card, when the Item Cross Reference Module, which was the standard NAV functionality available for the same purpose.
- Certain NAV modules / granules were procured unnecessarily. Getting rid of such modules can bring down the recurring cost like annual license renewal fee
- ITEM TRACKING: To track item from Sales invoice till the particular purchase / production order. This is a complicated process customization. The current approach was also slowing down the current NAV system.
- Limited knowledge & usage of NAV product (functionality & reporting) across organization
- Lack of training for the customer team to set up new company, masters etc., by themselves. This can be done by the customer team using the existing NAV license itself through proper training.
- MIS / Reports
- Users were not aware of Statistics / Analysis Reports available in NAV. These reports can support the decision making of the customer team. Users export NAV data through MS Excel cubes for reporting. No authentication of the MIS, as no data control in Excel.
- SQL Reporting Services: The customer can get its in-house team trained on SQL reporting services to manage the MIS requirements, instead of customizing NAV for the same. This would ensure that the customer gets instant decision support from the system instead of depending on the NAV vendor. Also, this reduces the NAV customization, which makes it easier for upgrade (in future) & save cost. SQL reporting services can also schedule certain required reports on set frequency, so that, the management can get online MIS automatically to enhance their decision making.
- No Audit Trail: Audit Trail Functionality was disabled. This is one of the critical control mechanisms of ERP, which wasn’t exist presently.
- NAV Module / Granule Usage-wise: Exhaustive usage (above 60%); Limited usage (less than 25%); No usage (0%) of NAV Modules / Granules
- Number of concurrent users was not sufficient enough to use NAV across all subsidiaries of the customer.
- Data Quality Issues: The existing data in NAV has lot of discrepancy issues. This could be due to wrong data entry or not updating all the transactions properly in the system. E.g. Number of Posted Shipments & Posted Sales Invoices have a wide difference
- Currently, single server manages NAV application, database & terminal services. Ideally, we can have separate database server & terminal server for security purpose and enhancing performance.
Key Benefits
VELCOM provided a very clear report which helped the customer with the following
- Decision to continue with the existing NAV version implementation
- Overall Budget (Total Cost of Ownership) plan to realize complete benefits of their ERP investments
- Organization Resource Planning to manage the ERP Project
- Evaluation Criteria to select the right implementation partner for the ERP Project Initiative
