Business Background
The company is an importer, exporter and wholesaler of all kinds of tyres, tubes, batteries as well as automobile spare parts in East Africa. They also specialize in importing and distributing of Chinese tyres in the East African markets and import through reliable sources around the world. As one of the leading importers, exporters and distributors of tyres in East Africa, Company maintains a ready stock of all sizes of tyres in their store.
Set up in 1962, Company is the largest Tyre Company in the region with 18 Tyre Expert Centres countrywide. It are the sole distributors of internationally renowned tyres; Michelin Tyres, BF Goodrich, Apollo and Kumho Tyres. Their products range from smallest lawn mower tyres to big Earth Mover machine tyres. Today Kingsway Tyres control almost 30% market share of Kenya
Objectives of ERP Implementation
The company’s accounting structure before ERP implementation was more of a manual kind of approach. They were using software called Opera II which was stand alone system and was used only in the head office. In order to control this widely spread business, the company decided to go for a web based centralized ERP to enforce controls and processes across all the branches.
Solution Choice
Management wished to use proven state-of-the-art technology that will provide the ability to plan, control and account for all company’s activities and resources. The company evaluated several ERPs, and finally chose ebizframe, an ERP solution from Eastern Software Solutions Pvt. Limited. ebizframe was preferred because of its state of art technology, good track record, and low entry and implementation cost and a clear implementation methodology and transparent costing system.
Pre ERP Scenario
Company was using Opera II, to manage its accounting, which was not fulfilling the increasing business needs. The branches use to work independently without much control because this branches use to work manually. Opera was used only in the head office and that too mainly for Finance & Accounts. Management never got the clear picture of their stock lying at various branches. It was difficult taskfor management to know the clear picture of the organization.
Pre-Implementation Scenario
Company’s branches were at different location and there was no link with each other. So, the first challenge was of offline centralized implementation (Incremental data updating on each server). ebizframe implementation started from Funzi Road branch in Jan 2003 and went live by Jun 2003. Later, it was implemented in other branches also. ebizframe was adopted with some customization and major re-engineering of their business processes that was necessary as the organization moved from a decentralized system to an off/on-line centralized system in a controlled operations environment. Purchase, Sales, Inventory, HR & Payroll and Finance modules are online now.
Benefits Derived after implementation of ebizframe
- Company has been able to achieve better monitoring of stock movement and valuation
- Lower turn around time for sales order from the branches
- Better quality control and vendor monitoring is possible as all the data is available online
- Finance with its features like consolidation options gives it a better control and flexibility over financial reporting
- Many MIS reports are available on click of button
- Better monitoring of entire operations
- Duplicate data entry due to inter branch transactions has reduced tremendously
- From 5 branches they have grown to 18 branches in a short span of 6 years
