Venture Computer, one of the few true hardware distributors in South Africa, today announced that it has gone live with phase one of its Baan C3 implementation as from 1st October 1998; a project which started in March and has been completed in record time.
The implementation of Baan`s distribution and finance modules is running on Compaq Alpha servers, which Venture distributes, using Windows NT together with Informix. The server, which also includes significant redundancy and disaster recovery capability, is supporting in excess of 100 concurrent users, making it one of the largest Baan NT sites in the country. The decision to use Baan was one that was application driven.
The implementation was undertaken by Venture, following extensive internal training, and under the guidance of Baan Consulting.
The immediate benefits, which are already being exploited, include:
- Very detailed order tracking, which is online and real-time
- Improved sales ordering and customer information; which is orders of magnitude better than previously
- Improved reporting
- Year 2000 readiness
- Stronger business control using workflow models
- Improved efficiency, since throughout the project there was staff involvement and commitment at all levels including the directorate
"Since there was significant exposure among the staff and commitment by them to this project, we were able to achieve phase one on schedule with only one full time project person," said John King, finance director at Venture, and the director responsible for overseeing this initiative. " We expect phase two, which includes the Service modules, to go live in early 1999, and this will then be followed by other enhancements, which will include Web enablement, EDI and EIS."
Tracking of contracts to a much greater extent and the simplification of the handling of special pricing/bids are just two examples of how we are benefiting from the new system," added Richard Fearon, the sales and marketing director at Venture.
"This initiative is not just a partnership with Baan themselves, but a business relationship, with the basic Baan system now installed being significantly better than our previously well developed home-grown systems. We have already increased the awareness of our business among our staff and lifted some of the previous business constraints we had, yet we have only just begun to explore the competitive advantages that we will be able to exploit further down the line".
Venture Computer is the first IT distributor to implement a full-blown ERP system, and is being watched extensively by its competitors.
Editors note
Venture Computer is the sole distributor in South Africa for Lexmark; and Tally; products including consumables, and a distributor for Compaq, with offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth. It was chosen by CRNSA readers as "Distributor of the Year" in 1996 and in 1997.
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