Customer Solution Case Study
/ Holding Company for Processing Fruit and Vegetables Increases Profits
Overview
Country:Serbia and Montenegro
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Agroekonomik comprises five enterprises and five factories in nine locations throughout Serbia. The company’s primary business is processing fruit and vegetables.
Business Situation
Agroekonomik needed to reconcile separate applications and databases. The company required an advanced solution capable of conforming to all the requirements of such a complex system.
Solution
Agroekonomik implemented a Microsoft® Business Solutions–Navision®-based Enterprise Resource Planning [ERP] solution with the help of Microsoft Certified Partner NPS d.o.o., Belgrade.
Benefits
Integration of all segments, with up-to-date information at the business-unit, factory, and holding-company levels.
Faster and better access to information
Optimal usage of assets and employees
Increased profitability / "We needed a solution that would allow us to make strategic decisions based on timely information, and integrate all segments of the business. Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision and NPS d.o.o., Belgrade gave us more than that—a common vision!"
Boris Ilic, President, Agroekonomik
Agroekonomik is a leader in processing fruit and vegetables in Serbia and Montenegro. Having grown at an astounding rate over the years has meant that with every new business unit, every new successful farm, every new processing plant, a new, local set of applications and databases was designed to help maintain the business processes. Having grown so much to have nine separate business units has also meant nine different IT systems based on different applications and databases.
Having identified this as a major limitation, Agroekonomik chose NPS, a local Microsoft® Certified Partner and integrator of IT solutions to generate a centralised and efficient ERP system. This solution was based on Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision (now part of Microsoft DynamicsTM) and has enabled Agroekonomik to optimise usage of assets and management of employees, by providing the right data needed to make quality managementdecisions.
Situation
The primary business of Agroekonomik is processing fruit and vegetables, specifically, the production of natural fruit juices, the seasonings Biozacin, Tomatina, and other tomato-based products, as well as jams, marmalade, and pickled vegetable products. For many years, Agroekonomik has been exporting organically grown food, which has been increasingly in demand, to Western European and American markets. The trademarks “Moc Prirode” and “Ritam” are recognized brand names of PN Agroekonomik. Ranked among the 100 largest companies in the country, Agroekonomik has about 300 full-time employees, and a large number of seasonal workers and contractors.
For many years, Agroekonomik operated its business using information systems developed according to its own needs and based on technologies that lost pace with time and with the company’s growth. Its large and geographically dispersed business system forced Agroekonomik to replicate and subsequently reconcile applications and databases, which were distinct and separate for each location. Hence, the existing solutions weren’t able to provide the necessary functionality and integration. Accepting the reality of the need to switch to more advanced technologies, software tools, and databases, the company’s leadership and its internal team of programmers took the path of finding the most optimal solution.
Considering its ambitious growth plans, Agroekonomik needed an information system that would link all business processes together and provide up-to-date data in order to make quality management decisions. In short, Agroekonomik needed a flexible system that would monitor the needs of a complex company.
According to Boris Ilic, President of Agroekonomik, an initial option based on the development of a new business information system using the company’s own resources was quickly rejected due to high costs and high risks. “What was needed,” says Ilic, “was a solution that was tested, reliable, promising, internationally established, and yet locally supported. We needed a solution that had adapted to our laws and regulations and specific circumstances, one that would integrate all necessary functions, offer additional ones, adjust to our system, and grow along with it.”
The new information system had to satisfy five very basic requirements: (1) cover all aspects of the company’s business, including the initiating of and accounting for work orders, hand receipts, and norm tables; (2) be in the Serbian language with the ability to also be used in English, since the company has a multinational workforce; (3) be formatted according to the needs of its users; (4) be flexible in the sense of being able to monitor the company’s expansion; and lastly, (5) be implemented by a team that was experienced in working with large and complex companies and could provide quality support locally, both online and on-site.
The list of requirements grew longer every day. “The new solution should not depend on a few people; it should afford quality support during operation and upgrades; it should allow for fast implementation of current and future requests; it should offer seamless migration to new versions of the program, etc.,” adds Ilic. “We wanted to be sure that everything we put into the new solution would become an investment, a new, additional asset to our company.”
“Furthermore, the price of the whole project was not to exceed the estimated price of creating our own development solution!” Ilic emphasizes and then continues, “We also had to face enormous problems with the outdated infrastructure in the country—how to connect all dislocated units in one complex system, all the businesses inside the holding company, when some of the enterprises had problems establishing a simple telephone connection! Everything had to be solved ‘on the fly,’ without interrupting business and production processes.”
Solution
After careful consideration of the complete proposal, the choice based on the requirements (which were exhaustive right from the start) finally became clear: Microsoft® Business Solutions–Navision® software.
What was so crucial in Agroekonomik’s final decision to go with Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision?
“In addition to the fact that Navision fulfilled everything we had expected from an ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] software,” says Ilic, “what was most important in our decision was the security of the investment. What distinguishes the approach of Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision from others is the licensing system and implementation. Licenses are bought from Microsoft, but the implementation is performed by authorized Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision partners, not Microsoft. For us, that meant that in case we were unhappy with the services of one partner, we could simply use another.
“The next important factor was the possibility of actively engaging our IT department in software implementation and maintenance. Special developmental modules will allow us to perform as much as 90 percent of future modifications of the software. An additional prevailing factor was the localization of the software (menus, commands, and Help systems), and also fundamental localization in the sense that the software conformed to local legal regulations. Because foreign citizens are employed by Agroekonomik, it was especially important for us to have a multilingual system in the real meaning of the word.”
Choosing a partner was not an easy task either. “Conditionally speaking, we had at our disposal all Navision partners across Europe and even further; however, there were only a few active partners in this market. We studied all the available materials, collected all information and all available foreign experiences—the local ones being nonexistent. After thinking everything over, our key requirements became that a partner must be local, possess knowledge and experience in implementation and maintenance of Navision solution, have an experienced and trained team of people ready to provide support at any time, and—what was rather hard to test—that a partner should last and endure despite all the challenges and turbulences in our market,” explains Ilic. “In NPS, we have found everything: They had an office in Belgrade, a clear vision of development, and they convinced us that they possessed the knowledge, as well as the necessary experience.”
NPS d.o.o, from Belgrade is a Microsoft Certified Partner and Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision Professional Partner. The company is a member of the NPS (Navision Product Specialist) Group, comprising business firms in Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana. Since 1995, when the first firm was founded, the group has successfully completed over 100 implementations of Microsoft Navision, among which 15 projects were rated as international. Working from the very beginning on the implementation and maintenance of Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision solutions, and completing about 30 percent of all its Microsoft Navision–based projects in the territory of the former states of Yugoslavia, the NPS Group is now expanding its business, offering business-intelligence (BI) and business-consulting services.
The implementation project at PN Agroekonomik was the biggest and most demanding project using Microsoft Navision ever undertaken in Serbia and Montenegro. Because of that, and because of the fact that Microsoft Navision is just one of the Microsoft technologies that the employees at Agroekonomik use in their daily work, Microsoft considers Agroekonomik a reference client.
The director of NPS d.o.o. Belgrade, Marko Perovic, acknowledged that the project of implementing Navision in PN Agroekonomik was complex and full of challenges, even for people who have been in this line of work for over eight years with direct and concrete experience in over 50 different projects.
“We consider all projects, and especially those that involve implementation of the manufacturing module, to be complex and demanding,” says Perovic. “In order for such a project to be successfully carried out, it is not enough to possess theoretical and practical knowledge in all necessary areas, to have experience or a trained and well coordinated team, adhering to the tested and internationally recognized Navision methodology—it is also necessary to establish full, tight, and interactive collaboration with the team formed by the purchasing client. It is very important that such a team is led by someone who is capable of identifying all the problems, possesses clear vision, and has the power, authority and determination to mobilize and motivate.
“Such projects require endurance on the part of all parties, because they last for months, sometimes a year, and even longer. It is very often the case that requirements and needs are changing on the fly, and are recognized and formulated only in certain phases of the realization, and because of that, the duration of such projects is very difficult to foresee and predict in advance. Fortunately, we escaped one of the dangerous traps into which, very often, partners and clients lacking enough past experience fall—that we, as a partner, in a desire to prove how we know it all and can do everything, embark on numerous and unnecessary modifications of the program, which later do not leave any room for a painless migration to a new version of the program, leaving the project to a very small number of well-trained individuals, and thereby significantly raising the requirements when switching to another partner. Avoiding this pitfall was possible only because the leader of the team of excellent experts at Agroekonomik was the President himself, Mr. Boris Ilic, who knew how to recognize the value and usability of standard and established Navision solutions.
“We have managed to connect all the businesses and dispersed components of the holding company in the best possible way, via the Internet, building our solution through a centralized SQL database. That fact, as well as the openness and remarkable knowledge of new technologies demonstrated by the leading people of Agroekonomik, were the foundation for implementing basic BI-OLAP technologies, specialized tools for data review.
“I hope, and believe, that as time passes, it will be more and more obvious that the road that leads to success has already been traced out, and that a large number of our companies will follow the example of Agroekonomik.”
Benefits
Speaking about the advantages of the new business solution, Ilic says, “First of all, thanks to good communication across our teams, we utilized the valuable experience and qualified people from NPS to their full potential. In a totally new way, we managed to recognize and utilize all the information from our old system, to connect and integrate all segments of our holding company, and to improve all levels of our business. When the company switched to the new solution, we used the opportunity to speed up, improve and synchronize all of our processes, and to modernize the organization of the holding company itself. That brought us new dynamics, new speed, and an increase in efficiency and profitability. Thanks to easily available, prompt information and to the numerous options for reports and reviews, the operational, day to day, and strategic levels of decision making are now under total control, providing invaluable help to our decision-making processes.”
“Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision and NPS not only fulfilled all our wishes and requests in the best possible way—they are an integral part of all our plans and visions today,” concludes Ilic.
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 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: