Microsoft Navision at BakeMark Hungary
 | Company: BakeMark Hungary, Ltd. Field: food sector, distribution Solution: ERP Microsoft solution: Microsoft Navision |
Bakery Supplies Europe, a division of CSM NV made Microsoft Business Solutions' integrated business management system a standard at its small and midsize companies. BakeMark Hungary implemented Navision in just six weeks - they call it a plug and play ERP solution.
Customer
CSM NV (Centrale Suiker Maatshappij) was founded in 1919 in the Netherlands as a sugar distributorproducer. Today it is active in both the consumer and the business-to-business markets with four major fields of activities: product groups of bakery supplies, sugar confectionery, bio-chemicals and sugar. Headquartered in Diemen/Amsterdam the conglomerate's operating companies are mainly based in Europe and North America, but also can also be found in South America and Asia. CSM has a total workforce of more than 14,000 employees worldwide and a yearly turnover of EUR 3,4 billion (2001/2002).
One of the largest slices of this cake (31.2%) is resulting comes from of the activities of its its division Bakery Supplies Europe Division, which has 22 operating companies in 16 European countries. It is also the #1 supplier of bakery ingredients on the continent with a 12% market share and an estimated market value of EUR 8.5 billion. BakeMark International is part of CSM Bakery Supplies Europe and since 1991 has had a subsidiary in Hungary.
Today BakeMark Hungary is one of the biggest bakery suppliers in the country. Its customers range from small bakeries around the corner to large bakery plants, from so called in-strore installed bakeries at in supermarkets to companies in the food service business. When someone eats a slice of bread in Hungary it is very likely that some of the ingredients in it were supplied by BakeMark Hungary. The company has about more than 200 large customers, smaller bakeries in the countryside are served through 19 wholesaler partners. It has three major product groups in its portfolio: bread ingredients, pastry ingredients and bakery fats.
In June 2003 CSM has acquired the bakery fats division of Unilever in Hungary and merged its product and customer portfolio with BakeMark Hungary. Bakery fats divisions of Unilever in Western European countries were acquired in 2000. This was a major step in terms of growth and the Hungarian company with only 32 employees now has a yearly turnover of HUF 3,6 billion.
Business issue
This was a turning point at which BakeMark Hungary decided to implement an integrated business management solution. CSM companies in other countries were already using Microsoft Business Solution's Navision. Based on their initial positive experiences the conglomerate has made it a standard for its midsize companies up to 300 employees and developed a valuable know-how in both implementation and operation of this integrated business management solution.
CSM and its Bakery Supplies Europe division made this strategic commitment to simplify and unify the complexity of their systems. The series of acquisitions resulted in a diverse IT environment within the merged companies, which made the whole management process unnecessarily more and more difficult. On the other hand the management of Bakery Supplies Europe knew exactly what they wanted: relevant business data fast across the whole division.
Niklaus Siegfried, project manager of new business development in Central Eastern Europe, finance and IT manager at BakeMark Hungary has actually led an implementation project of Navision at a CSM company in Switzerland before relocating.
-When I joined BakeMark Switzerland in 2001 the decision had been already made - said Mr. Siegfried. - That was my first encounter with Navision. In a way I had no choice, but soon realized, that I was happy with thatit. Implementing Navision was a good decision. Previously I used to work in the financial sector where often one has to deal with huge and sometimes unflexible systems are in use. and cannot change anything. Navision is a completely different experience, it offers one of the most user friendly environments and easy to use systems. In my opinion if you know Microsoft Access a little bit you won't have any difficulties using Navision. Our strategy also requires that there is a local version of Navision available in each country where we implement the system. Since that was the case in Hungary we went with Navision here as well. Currently we are using this system in Austria, Hungary and Switzerland and soon we will go on-line 'll be using it in the Netherlands and the UK, and it is also planned for useto implement Navision in Portugal and Spain.
At their Swiss company BakeMark International had previously used SAP which they acquired through their merger with Unilever there prior to implementing Navision. In Hungary they had used a stand alone solution of a small local provider which was not acceptable suitable to support their business with appropriate information.any longer.
Food business is a very low margin-e business, so it is of the highest importance to be able to follow how this margine develops its development throughout purchasing, stocking and selling process - says Mr. Siegfried. - We're applying a three- dimensional approach in this our business, where the dimensions are the product, the G/L account and the customer groups. We want to see in any given moment in all of these dimensions what results we are expectingachieving. Not only that rReporting to our division is based on this data but we it also supports our daily work and decision making. making with this information. To achieve this we need integration and real time availability of business data.
Solution
The acquisition of Unilever's bakery fats division in Hungary took place in June 2003, when it was already clear that the existing systems were no longer feasiblewould no longer be able to support the business. At BakeMark Hungary they already knew that they were going to implement Navision, and Mr. Siegfried as a project manager wanted the new system to be put into place by the 1st of October. And that was exactly what they did.
At BakeMark Hungary with the support of MultiSoft Hungary the implementation including testing of Navision required 6 weeks to be completed with the support of MultiSoft Hungary, including testing. As Mr. Siegfried put it, they just had to plug it in and Navision worked for them. They started the process with Navision 3.60 but since then upgraded to version 3.70 which became available in the meantime. This system fulfills all the requirements the company needs.
We took the finances module as a basis and built around it vendors and customers, sales and orders, inventory and payroll modules - said Mr. Siegfried. - The system was is built on a dedicated Navision Server with 10 workstations connected to it locally at BakeMark Hungary's offices. But we plan to implement a Windows Terminal Server application to allow remote access to our sales force in the field. Such an application is already in use at the Swiss sister company, where at the end of the day sales personnel remotely access Navision using their laptops from their homes, to send their reports and to prepare their next day's visits. for the next day. All the reporting throughout the company is based on Excell sheets. At BakeMark Hungary we plan to implement a similar system for 10-12 sales people later this in the year. this model will include 10-12 sales staff members. Until then they will continue to print their data on portable printers and fax it to the office.
Due to the limited implementation time, BakeMark has decided to keep the required data migration on a rather low level. Only major master data (such as items, customers and venders) as well as open customer and vendor invoices were transferred into Navison. Fortunately standartised interfaces allowed a very smart and easy import of different data from Excel and ASCII-files. During the implementation process the company has imported vendor invoices and customer invoices but no data movement and found that after converting existing data into Excell or ASCII files Navision makes importing very easy.
There were two major factors which really drove the implementation process - said Mr. Siegfried. - MultiSoft has a deep and profound knowledge of Navision and our company is also experienced in the implementation of this integrated business management system. So we both knew that we had to set out a detailed plan of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. This was also the most difficult part of the implementation, to get one opinion on how certain things should look and work. But basically you should always focus on what your customer expects from you instead of sticking to your own expectations of an ERP system.of Navision or any other ERP system. From that point on the implementation was a straight forward process. Our small project team also wanted to use as many of the standard solutions of Navision as possible. I strongly believe that it is reasonable to rely on the large experience of Microsoft Business Solutions and other vendors of ERP packages. They've already analyzed the a lot of ways in which a company can function in the most efficient manner. Many of the standardized business processes will be applicable at your company as well. If you persist in using your own unique processes without thinking of the alternatives that the system offers you will end up with an implementation which will have one hella lot of a customization but which will probably not survivestop working after the next update. We wanted to avoid this.
At the same time MultiSoft has developed some special features for BakeMark Hungary, like the limited cost accounting function, which helps the company apny to allocate certain costs to certain products or product groups.
Cost accounting is not part of the Navision standard yet - says Mr. Siegfried. - Every company develops its own solution, we did this in Switzerland as well as in Hungary, and I think Microsoft Business Solutions should focus on this and allow develop a respective applicationa common tool for customers to do it. The already mentioned next thing we very much appreciate in Navision 3.70 is its multidimensional functionality of Navision 3.70 is already a very good basis for this and which allows you to structure your business and the respective results andresults. know exactly where are they coming from. Without this the company is flying in a fog which is absolutely not acceptable on a long term basis. All in all in just 6 weeks you cannot address and solve all the issues of course but with Navision you can have a system that works straight after the first step and which allows you can to make further adjustments while using it live as we do.later on.
In Mr. Siegfried's experience nece the upgrade and hotline agreements will covers the basic functions of Navision but he also underscores the fact that it is essential to have a reliable and dedicated partner for both implementation and support which (MultiSoft Hungary). is.
Results and Plans
Navision is simple to implement. There is a standard version developed in Denmark and based on that Microsoft Business Solutions partners develop local versions in respective countries to deal with the local human resources and tax issues. CSM has realized that all companies in its bakery business have more or less the same product-, structure, customer-, groups structure and therefore also similar IT needs. In order to monitor the respective business even better, CSM has decided toSo they choose Navision with its standard functions and are now building build a so called kernel on top of the standard functionality, which will provided dedicated management information for its it with extended functionality for their companies. This kernel, based on Navision 3.70 has been developed by a Dutch MBS Navision partner for version 3.70 and it is will also be upgradeable for future versions as well. The first implementation of this kernel will take place in the Netherlands and UK, then other countries will follow.
This is another major advantage of Navision, you don't need much customization but if it is necessary the system can be tailored easily - says Mr. Siegfried. - I have been working with Navision for 3 years. Having done several implementations of this ERP system I think it is a superb technology for data filtering and exporting them to Excell or other tools allowing you to have further reports or business analyis. which create reports. So the user can get the results fast and easily on the way. And you dont need special skills or knowledge to be able to perform this, it is easy to define your output. At a small company employees have to be versatile and pick up each anothers work instantly if needed. With Navision this is no problem, it is simple to learn how to use the different modules. Each of them has a familiar graphical user interface where useful functions like copy/paste and printing are just a click away. And Navision offers a much bettera very competitive price/performance relationship. Actually, we had calculated the cost per workplace of our different ERP systems and these costs were significantly lower with Navision.
Besides allowing remote access to members of its sales force BakeMark Hungary also plans to implement the CRM functionality of Navision. The decision will be made at on a division level and Bakery Supplies Europe is already working on such a proposal.
