Minolco, distributors of Minolta and Oce office automation products in South Africa, is streamlining its business processes, becoming more customer focused, and more connected with its international suppliers in partnership with inter-enterprise and e-business solutions company SAP.
"Minolco`s sales force will be provided with the mobile sales facility as part of our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) initiative and we will also implement a call centre solution," says Jaenne van der Westhuizen, project manager at Minolco.
"With mobile sales, Minolco`s sales reps, who are frequently on the road, will be able to improve customer service and purchasing efficiencies as they will always have the required information at hand.
"Our sales reps, operating nationwide and in Namibia, will be able to access the latest information on products, customers, prices and competitors with SAP`s mobile sales component installed on a laptop or portable digital assistance (PDA) device, such as a PalmPilot," he says.
Greg Chamberlin, product manager CPG/ Retail at SAP Africa, says: "CRM does not stop with sales and service. It extends beyond company walls into the entire value chain, affecting customers, partners and suppliers in an entirely connected manner."
"In future, we plan to connect to our suppliers Minolco in Japan and Oce in Holland. They both have SAP solutions - making the link-up easier and quicker," says van der Westhuizen.
"Having the same business solution as our suppliers means we will be communicating on the same wave length and must ultimately be able to integrate our business processes, for increased efficiency," he says.
" With an extended enterprise model: supply chain management; enterprise resource planning; and customer relationship management, companies have the potential to develop distinctive competence and define the firm`s position in the overall value chain," notes Chamberlin.
"We expect SAP to provide real time information to our business decision makers, enabling faster decision making, when we go live with the SAP solution at the end of October, " says van der Westhuizen.
"At Minolco we are planning on implementing SAP in stages, to ensure that we deliver the areas providing biggest benefit first," he says.
"We will first establish a business blueprint, which entails examining our current processes, designing a solution to make Minolco`s future business processes more efficient, and defining how SAP will support them.
"We will then implement integrated financial and cost management processes. We also expect to streamline Minolco`s materials management, and sales and service management functions.
"After implementing our CRM components, we will be focusing on implementing human resources functionality, providing business intelligence via a business warehouse and we intend to further streamline our CRM functions to make them more real-time," he says.
"We will be following the `AcceleratedSAP` methodology as it`s been tried and tested worldwide and is geared towards delivering a SAP solution in the most efficient way," concludes van der Westhuizen.
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