Sara Lee, the Durban-based manufacturer of household and body care products, is preparing to upgrade its J.D. Edwards (JDE) financial, distribution and manufacturing software suite to OneWorld, J.D. Edwards open systems ERP solutions, allowing it to make use of e-commerce transactions and stay abreast of current technology.
This was confirmed by Doug Kilburn, financial director at Sara Lee, who says that as a user of JDE technology since the early 1990s, the motivation to move to OneWorld is to make sure that the software it is using is current and relevant to the ongoing growth of the business.
"We are currently evaluating the hardware platform for OneWorld and will decide over the next month or two which hardware platform to adapt. The results of these evaluations will be sent to our parent offices in the Netherlands for ratification and we will start rolling out the upgrade in June or July," says Kilburn.
About 80 JDE users at Sara Lee will be affected by the upgrade to OneWorld while systems at 10 sales agencies throughout the country will also need to be upgraded.
"Sara Lee maintains a relatively small number of IT staff and we rely heavily on the skills provided by JDE`s Durban personnel and consultants from Deloitte & Touche who over the years have seen to it that our investment in the software was properly supported and maintained," says Kilburn.
He says the development of JDE`s e-commerce strategy in OneWorld will have a significant impact in conducting business with Sara Lee`s outsourced sales agents, suppliers and customers. While a degree of success has been achieved using EDI technology, Kilburn believes that e-commerce via the Internet will be priority once OneWorld has been installed.
"The upgrade will require changes in the way we do business, but we have committed ourselves. Our users are already familiar with JDE technology and we expect the upgrade path to go smoothly and quickly."
Kilburn adds that Sara Lee will also be taking advantage of the latest improved functionality of OneWorld, such as activity based costing, and customer care as well as supply chain management.
"The whole process of upgrading is to remain relevant in a very competitive industry. We believe JDE`s OneWorld will assist us in improving the way we do business and offers us an opportunity to put some of these improvement into practise," he says.
Share