Johannesburg, 14 Jun 2004
IT infrastructure and solutions provider, Datacentrix, has successfully rolled out a complete hosted services solution for food manufacturer, Pride Milling. The three-year contract is valued at R11.5 million.
The implementation includes a full disaster recovery plan (DRP) with firewall, anti-virus software, Microsoft Exchange and Great Plains E-Enterprise solution running on an SQL server database with Proclarity business analytics utilising SQL OLAP cubes.
Johan du Toit, customer service director at Datacentrix, says Pride Milling decided to migrate from its mainframe IT environment, and replace it with a fully integrated IT solution encompassing intelligent reporting capabilities, covering financial, stock management and distribution.
"The objective of the solution was to align the systems architecture with the business architecture. Users had to be moved from a green screen environment to a graphic user interface environment and education and training was therefore crucial to the success of the project," says Du Toit.
Hein Kotze, IT manager at Pride Milling, confirms that Datacentrix has tailored the entire infrastructure solution to his company`s requirements and that the system is now fully functional.
"We were looking for a supplier that could provide us with a complete solution. We completed a software and hardware supplier evaluation and Datacentrix emerged as the top provider," he says.
"From an operational point of view, the real-time business intelligence information that we now get from the system has improved our external service, as well as our internal data confidence. The dynamic reporting capabilities of Great Plains and ProClarity allow our sales teams and general managers to drill down and draw reports in preferred formats, which they are most comfortable with.
"Overall, the accurate, complete and relevant information in our systems and the proper use has improved the quality of our decisions and greatly reduced our operational risk. The information supports our strategic decisions, from management of stock and production in real time, right through to executive reporting and director level," says Kotze.
He adds that Pride Milling selected Datacentrix because it was looking for a results orientated long-term strategic partner.
"Datacentrix has an intimate knowledge of the milling industry, which is crucial for the success of an implementation of this scale," he concludes.
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