/vnd/media/agency_attachments/bGjnvN2ncYDdhj74yP9p.png)
Pertisth Mankotia, head, IT, Sheela Foam is instrumental in developing and implementing home-grown ERP solutions. He was responsible for digitization of an enterprise and enhancing speed and innovation in the business. The key projects initiated by Pertisth include tracking secondary sales, tertiary sales, controlled wholeselling to un-authorized dealers, accessing the channel stock, improving the serviceability, improved operational efficiencies, reduced wastages and implementation of TOC. He transformed a simple SMS technology to control market price, brought in weekly monitoring and strong daily-update mechanisms. He completely transformed the ICT scenario from just a few rudimentary and standalone systems.
Speaking to VOICE&DATA, Pertisth Mankotia shares insights on technologies that enabled Sheela Foam to overcome business challenges...
-Pertisth Mankotia
head, IT, Sheela Foam
How are you utilizing ICT right from vendor management, manufacturing, logistics management, distribution management, to billing management?
Sheela Foam is the leading manufacturer of polyurethane foam in India. It is one of the largest in South Asia and has footprints in India and Australia. Amongst our brands 'Sleepwell' and 'Feather foam' leads. And the turnover of the group is more than `1,500 crore. In India and Australia we have over 12 and 5 manufacturing units, respectively using state-of-the-art technology.
Information technology caters to our entire business processes right from the procurement, supply chain, logistics, production, distribution to billing. These IT processes are handled by the home-grown enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. It is also extended to distributors. Automation solutions, developed in-house, can also contributed immensely to our business operations.
How is ICT helping boost the bottomline?
The SMS solution is playing a significant role to boost our bottomline, align our performance parameters and enhance our turnover. With the help of in-house ERP, we built a system to send out every employee daily and weekly reports via SMS. This solution was primarily deployed to keep a tab on throughput, the difference between unit sale price and unit variable cost, and to focus on margins.
This SMS solution included the throughput generated during that week, the company's growth over last year, material dispatched the previous day, and outstanding orders, among others. This data is disseminated to employees to help them stay focused and heed attention towards business efficiency. It also allows our management to highlight cases that generated low throughput.
And it motivates employees to realign their focus to controlling margins, and thus, the bottomline of the business. It has helped us identify weak areas both in market and product terms, which are now the main focus areas for improvement. We have seen huge growth because of focused weekly monitoring and a strong daily-update mechanism.
Which are the integrated ICT solutions that you have deployed and others in the pipeline?
Our home-grown ERP solutions power all segments of business viz, supply chain, and CRM. We have also deployed business intelligence for distribution and in the market also. QlikView has helped us integrate it into our software.
We felt the need for an integrated approach in late 90s but as the foam industry was small and there weren't any off-the-shelf solutions in the market. And then after working for 3 years, we developed a home-grown ERP 'Greatplus'. And this solution has integrated entire business functions and it streamlined manufacturing and distribution network.
Other innovative offerings on ERP?
Product Guarantee Registration through SMS is one of our innovative solutions. When our dealer makes a sale, he texts the product serial number and the customer's mobile number to the company. This SMS gets routed to our database, where the system checks the entire transaction and within 2 minutes of receiving the SMS, the system automatically informs the dealer and the customer about its validation and the MOP of the product. This is a perfect solution to know that the product is sold from a genuine dealer and it also records the movement of the product from factory to distributor and from distributor to dealer.
Everyday at 6 am, an SMS is sent out to our management team about the day's production, dispatch, and outstanding status and this enables them to better plan their schedule and deliver more efficiently. Through ERP we also automated the production process. An SMS is sent to the distributor about the material that is dispatched and this is recorded by our ERP system.
What is the investment planned for ICT in FY13?
Our IT expenses are low. Our y-o-y spend is approximately 10% to 20%.
What are your ICT priorities for the next 2 to 3 years?
We implement technology only if it brings value to our business processes and not for the heck of it. We have successfully rolled out business analytics and virtualization. This year we intend to expand cloud solutions and focus on mobility space.
Brief us on your business intelligence implementation.
We intended to enhance our business decisions-making in 2008 with the help of our static reports that served strategic, operational, and tactical needs of the users. And analyzing exponential data on distribution and channel sales was a challenge and we opted for the implementation of business intelligence. After the evaluation process for BI solutions from SAP, Oracle, and QlikTech. We chose Qlik Tech's solution as it allowed the users to perform calculations on the fly and had the multi-dimensional analysis feature. QlikView's ability to integrate with the home-grown ERP, customization, user interface, accessibility over a smartphone and cost were also the important considerations. In December 2009, 7 members of the top management at Sheela were provided with full access to the BI solution over LAN. This was further extended to the heads of zones and the company's top 30 distributors. Our IT team set up a private cloud to deliver BI to its internal and external users over LAN and internet. Even our distributors use the BI solution to analyze trends in their own businesses. BI is playing a critical role in evaluating profitable territories or strategies and also to understand the revenue that each product generates in a particular region. It also helped in enhancing our sales. We get an accurate information on the impact of price changes, schemes, and other promotional activities on its sales.
Are you looking at big data as your dependency is more on social media, research, and other feedback mechanisms?
At present, we have no thoughts on deploying big data. In future, if we see that it is a requirement and it adds value, we would implement it.
Are you looking at 3G applications? If yes, which are the applications being deployed in your organization?
We do not have specific 3G applications. However, 3G has been very useful due to the bandwidth. Wherever 3G is available, our applications can be accessed faster and at a less cost as compared to MPLS infrastructure. To connect over 3,000 dealers, MPLS costs heavily while 3G is handy and reduces management costs as well.