The Middle East's leading distribution house and corporate solution provider upgrades its IT networking infrastructure to provide a higher level of services to its business partners and customers
Dubai, June 2003: SMB Group, the region’s leading distribution house and corporate solution provider, has implemented JD Edwards’ ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution for its distribution operations (to cover Inventory, Procurement and Sales), and its finance department for general accounting, accounts receivable and accounts payable and fixed assets. The primary objective of adopting an ERP solution was to have online, real-time business information and increase the efficiency of SMB’s operations.
According to Seyed Bukhary, director, SMB Group, “there was a strong need for both management and sales to interact with finance for information relating to sales, purchase, inventory, receivables and payables. With the old system, often, this information was not timely and decision making and devising strategies was, in some cases, a Herculean task. The company was in desperate need of a solution that would adapt to our changing business atmosphere, increase operational efficiency and thereby reduce operational costs.”
By implementing JD Edwards’ ERP solution, SMB took the opportunity to revamp its business processes. Major process impediments and possible improvements were identified and, through the active involvement of both SMB management and key personnel in all the areas of operations, each business process was examined for efficiency and effectiveness.
“The ultimate goal was to bring a flexible yet stable application which would adapt to the changes in the business processes,” pointed out Bukhary. “The flexibility of the new software system means that our team can continue to evolve the process as conditions change simply by changing the processing parameters. This is enabled by the flow of online information through reporting tools that provides optimal information for all concerned.”
After evaluating several ERP solutions, SMB selected JD Edwards’ ERP offering based on its price/performance ratio, its adaptability, scalability and ability to increase efficiency of SMB’s existing operations. Since smooth implementation was also critical to the selection of an ERP solution, the people behind software implementation formed a strong basis for selection.
The implementation is expected to take seven months. The implementation process started with Business Analysis where the management and key operational personnel were involved to identify and revamp business processes. Then JD Edwards proceeded with the Conference Room Pilot (CRP) where revamped business processes were tested, and after further development and data conversion, legacy system balances were migrated to the new system.
“As the implementation process is in its early stages of post live environment, we (management) do not expect to see visible returns immediately, but it will certainly change the way we do business in the near future, which, in turn, will result in substantial cost savings, increasing operational efficiency.”
Relations with customers have certainly improved with increased efficiency in service. Sales now have first hand information of individual customer’s credit and outstanding receivables status. Though enhancing customer and supplier relationships was not within the scope of the implementation, plans are on the anvil by implementing the B2B solution and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. The scalability of the software ensures that these future plans could be easily integrated into the system.
-Ends-
About SMB
With over a decade in the IT business, the SMB Group is headquartered in Dubai. Its core business activities include distribution and retail of hardware products and providing software and networking solutions and services.
The SMB Group comprises of six divisions: SMB Distribution L.L.C, Peripherals Gulf Limited, SMB Computers L.L.C (Retail Stores), SMB Computers LLC (Corporate Sales), SMB Customer Care, SMB Networking and Communications.
For more information on this press release, please contact:
SMB:
Market Buzz International:
Swithin D’Silva
Cyrus Roche
Tel: +971 4 3974744
E-mail: swithin@smb.co.ae
Tel: +971 4 3914873
E-mail: cyrus@themarketbuzz.net
© Press Release 2003
