Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Engineering Company Unifies Data, Improves Productivity by 50 Percent
Overview
Country or Region:India
Industry:Engineering
Customer Profile
Balzers India Limited, an ISO 9001:2000–certified firm, is the subsidiary of Unaxis Holding AG, Switzerland, a global leader in the field of high vacuum and thin film technology.
Business Situation
To streamline communications worldwide and improve dataflow to its Swiss headquarters, Balzers needed anenterprise resource planningsolution.
Solution
With assistance from Microsoft Certified Partner Godrej Infotech, Microsoft®Business Solutions–Navision® 3.7 was implemented across Balzers’ business locations.
Benefits
Provides access to standardized information across business locations
Improves user productivity by 50 percent
Enhancesnetwork and user security
Simplifiesadministration
Simplifies report generation / “We now have one common system—one database. This has been achieved with the implementation of Microsoft Navision3.7.”
Pramod Shirse, Senior Executive—IT, Balzers IndiaLimited
Balzers India Limited, a leading supplier of coatings for tools and precision components,struggled to manage data flow to its parent company. Multiple formats and time spent on data collection burdened employees. To simplify business processes, Balzers India implemented Microsoft®Business Solutions–Navision®3.7 (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™) across its three locations in India and other locations worldwide. In doing so, the organization has consolidated all information into a single database. The corporate headquarters in Switzerland now has direct access to India’sreports and data, and employee productivity is up. With Microsoft Navision helping the company meet local Indian tax and statutory requirements, Balzers Indianow can issue Tax Deducted at Source certificates directly to its contractors. Also, considerable time is saved in managing the database and generating reports.
Situation
Balzers India Limited is a leading supplier of coatings that significantly improve the performance of tools and precision components. It is a subsidiary of Unaxis Holding AG, Switzerland, a global leader in the field of high vacuum and thin film technology.
Balzers develops coatings and coating processes and markets systems and production equipment. Its is the only company that provides a contract coating service in a global network, which currently includes more than 60 production centres in Europe, the United States, and Asia. Incorporated in 1994 in India, Balzers has established three state-of-the-art coating centres at Pune (Maharashtra), Gurgaon (Haryana), and Bangalore (Karnataka). Balzers caters to the need of wear protection coatings on tools used by Indian engineering industries.
Balzers has multiple locations in 23 countries worldwide. Earlier, each business unit in each country had its own legacy system. All business information was collated at the company headquarters inSwitzerland. Hence, a lot of accounting was required to consolidate the data from different subsidiaries.
At the subsidiary level, employees were required to compile reports for the local subsidiary, as per the local requirements and laws, and then create another set of reports for the parent organization. In addition, all three centres in India were also usingseparate legacy systems. Therefore, the production and financial information first had to be compiled at the subsidiary level.
This repetition of compiling information caused delays and human errors andoverburdened employees with mundane tasks.The corporate headquarters felt the need for a common solution for all its business units worldwide.
Solution
Balzers’ holding company, Unaxis, was already usingSAP, but Balzers decided to opt for Microsoft®Business Solutions–Navision®3.7, now part of Microsoft Dynamics™. However, the challenge was to use a common version while adhering to country-specific localization requirements.
Microsoft Navisionoffers a hub-and-spoke model. Usually, in large organizations, the subsidiaries and branches of large businesses tend to have different needs than their parent companies. The data in their systems, however, must be capable of integrating with that of the parent company for the organization to function as a whole. The hub-and-spokeconcept behind Microsoft Navisionis a way to do so efficiently.
Microsoft Certified Partner Godrej Infotech Limited assisted Balzers with the implementation of Microsoft Navision. “We chose Godrej Infotech because it is a known name, and we were convinced that they would understand our business and deliver on the plan,” remarks Ramesh Keskar, Managing Director, Balzers India Limited.
A team of expert functional and technical consultants from Godrej Infotech were briefed on the business requirements at Balzers India across its different locations within the country with respect to the Indian localization requirements. A detailed project plan was prepared to develop the customizations and implement the business solution at Balzers India. The finance, sales, purchase, and inventory modules of Microsoft Navision were implemented across the organization, along with hands-on user training.
The project also required some customization to meet the needs of Balzers India and its head office. A module called Work Easy was created by a German company specifically for Balzers. This componentmanages the process from internalinspection of the tools sent by a customer through production, quality, and invoicing. Work Easy has been developed on Microsoft Navision so that it can be used by other subsidiaries as well. It has been integrated seamlessly with all the modules of Microsoft Navision.
“The plan was to complete the entire project with concurrent implementations at all three locations in India within 100 days. This goal was achieved,” says Keskar.
Benefits
The company has seen many benefits from the implementation of Microsoft Business Solutions–Navisionacross all locations.
Provides Access to Standardized Information Across Business Locations
“We now have one common system—one database. This has been achieved with the implementation of Microsoft Navision 3.7,” explains Pramod Shirse, Senior Executive—IT, Balzers India. All the users at Balzers India access the same information online across all three locations. This has improved both daily business processes and employee efficiency.
“The head office can also see the production and financial data online. This has increased the transparency between the head office and the Indian subsidiary,” explains Keskar.
Improves User Productivity by 50 Percent
Balzers India has three centres in the country. Before the new solution, New Delhi and Bangaloreused Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet software for financial and production data and sent it as attachments in e-mailto the Pune centre. This data was then collated for India to meet its local requirements, and then tabulated as per the head office’s requirement.
“All this could take months, especially at year end. However, we have managed to cut the time by more than half and improve employee productivity by 50 percent by deploying Microsoft Navision,” explains Keskar.
Enhances Network and User Security
With the help of the roles-based security features built into Microsoft Navision, user access can be limited by using the security options and permissions. Balzers can now restrict information to specific users ata given location, while allowing senior management to view information for all locations.
Simplifies Administration
Balzers headquarters directly logs on to Microsoft Navisionfor its data requirements. It now has online access to information, completely removing all time lags and people dependencies.Microsoft Navisionfacilitates a common core solution across the globe. This has helped Balzers overcome interpretational issues for business numbers across different countries.
Report Generation
A flexible information-systemreporting option has considerably reduced the time spent creating reports for India as well as the headquarters. With the India localization requirements in place, Balzers India is now able to directly issue statutory documents like Tax Deducted at Source certificates to its contractors.
This is just the beginning, and as the users of Balzers new system become more familiar with it, productivity will improve further.
About Godrej Infotech Limited
Godrej Infotech, formerly a division of Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Company Limited, commenced operations as a separate corporate entity on April 1, 1999. Godrej Infotech is a part of the diversified GODREJ group, established in India in 1897. The company is assessed at Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model (SEI-CMM) Level 4. In addition to SEI-CMM Level 4, it also has the ISO-9001:2000 Quality systems certification for analysis, design, coding, testing, delivery, and maintenance of commercial application software,enterprise resource planningconsultancy, andoperations and technology services.
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship,
and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business and helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to: