Johannesburg, 31 Aug 2010
Comztek has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Xpedia for some years developing various applications that give Comztek a competitive edge in a tight distribution industry. The latest such addition to Comztek's systems landscape is a forecast system. Since the introduction of the new forecast system, Comztek's forecasting processes have become more accurate and efficient, providing better management information for tactical and strategic decisions and freeing up sales resources to focus on sales instead of forecast administration.
Since its inception in 1995, Comztek has firmly established itself as one of South Africa's leading communication systems distributors, driven by exceptional service and skills. Comztek distributes technology solutions throughout Africa with branch offices in Namibia, Kenya, Zambia and South Africa. The solutions offered by Comztek cover six different technology focus areas, namely: consumer electronics, data centre, networks, security & storage, software infrastructure, and voice & video.
With rapid growth experienced since its inception, Comztek started to outgrow some of its internal systems infrastructure. Key among these was MIS, the in-house developed system that was used for product management and quoting, but was limited in flexibility and scalability due to its somewhat outdated technical architecture and lack of internal development resources to address this and core design changes that were sorely needed.
Comztek required a new system capable of supporting its geographically distributed sales force and the growing needs of a growing organisation. Key requirements included issues of sales productivity and effective control over margins and pricing across multiple geographies. Comztek also wanted to expose its new applications through a SharePoint portal to improve accessibility and consolidate its systems landscape and wanted a development partner who could achieve this while still understanding the business value and processes behind these applications. Thus Xpedia was approached to develop SPS (Sales and Product System), which went live in November 2008 and has since helped Comztek to significantly improve margins and sales productivity.
The next step in improving sales force productivity and giving management better information was to refine the forecasting process. Traditionally, Comztek used a manual spreadsheet-based forecasting process that served it well for years, but became cumbersome and complex to manage as the organization grew. Comztek was faced with a challenging environment when it came to forecasting, with myriad complexities that was starting to become unmanageable. This translated into a lot of time being spent on forecasting spreadsheets by sales people who could be better applied doing what they're supposed to, namely selling. It also meant that accuracy of information and corporate governance in the forecasting and related processes became increasingly challenging and less reliable, requiring more and more management time to keep in check as the organization grew. Another challenge was the integration of information between forecasting and various related processes that included information from various other systems. Comztek approached Xpedia to come up with a better solution.
Xpedia's development methodology, designed to optimise return on investment and based on the Scrum process and underlying principles of the agile movement, was used to undertake these developments. This included involving Comztek's users and business decision-makers heavily in the development process and particularly in determining development priorities and requirements, with constant focus on investing where the return value is likely to be highest. Combined with Xpedia's robust and comprehensive software engineering practices and expertise, the process ensures that both the SPS and forecast systems evolve in line with ever-changing business requirements and remain relevant as the organisation evolves.
The forecast system was introduced in February 2010 and has now become an integral part of Comztek's operations. Key benefits include drastically reduced time spent on both forecast administration and management, more accurate forecast information for management decisions, better corporate governance in forecasting and related sales and commission processes, elimination of data and process duplication through integration with various business systems and improved forecasting information and process accessibility through SharePoint portal. Comztek has further benefitted from a long term relationship Xpedia as more than simply a supplier of development services, but rather as a trusted partner and advisor engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship. With these systems operational for some time, Comztek is now seeing the improvements in its bottom line that validates Comztek's vision of investing in these systems. Xpedia continues to support and improve Comztek's various systems with ongoing enhancements and support services in the quest to continue improving Comztek's return on its development investment.
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