Bidco oil refineries, the leading Kenyan refiner, manufacturer and marketer of edible oils, fats and soaps, has completed a major implementation of Baan's iBaan suite of Internet-enabled solutions.
Bidco has now gone live with the iBaan Sales and iBaan Procurement solutions at its manufacturing site in Thika, Kenya - the first iBaan implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa. The iBaan solutions help Bidco staff, suppliers and customers throughout Africa to process sales, pricing and financial information online, and can help the company to significantly reduce strategic procurement costs.
Baan is the global provider of B2B collaborative commerce solutions and a unit of Invensys Software Systems - a division of Invensys plc. Softworx - Baan's South African alliance organisation - implemented the iBaan solutions in just 35 days and won the order from Bidco against competition from other leading vendors including Broadvision, Oracle and Electrade.
iBaan Sales allows Bidco to provide its customers with a range of online functions including placing sales orders, accessing product information, obtaining real-time quotes, and viewing relevant back-office information. iBaan Procurement enables Bidco to drive its strategic procurement processes via the Internet, consolidating items, suppliers and contracts, enabling it to route and control the flow of money out of the company.
Jane Thomson, MD of the sole distributor of iBaan in SA, notes that the power of the iBaan e-business solutions lies in the time to deploy. This project, and the associated costs are a fraction of similar costs and times being reported out of the more dedicated e-business companies. Coupled with the tight integration, iBaan is a sure winner.
Vimal Shah, Managing Director of Bidco, said: "We have a clear vision to be all over Africa and we are expanding throughout Africa, with a particular focus on East Africa. We saw e-enablement as an ideal way of servicing existing customers more efficiently and being available for business to new customers all over Africa, streamlining operating processes and empowering our employees. We are an existing Baan user and so the company was a logical choice as a supplier - but we were still impressed with the higher levels of functionality and out-of-the-box integration of iBaan Sales and iBaan Procurement when compared to competitive products. Now that the iBaan solutions have been successfully implemented, we are already planning the next phase of the project - to provide management information through iBaan."
iBaan Sales and iBaan Procurement are part of the new iBaan suite of Internet-enabled solutions. iBaan combines proven Baan technology with significant new developments that enable customers to take significant steps towards seamlessly integrating systems and processes, providing end-users with personalised and easy-to-use information, and empowering businesses to collaborate with their customers and suppliers over the Internet.
For more information on Softworx, please visit our Web site: http://www.esoftworx.co.za
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