A group which is a leader in the castings and forging industry

Company Overview

The company has a strong hold over the south Indian and Sri Lankan market. The company caters to domestic as well as overseas customers and specializes in a wide variety of Cast Iron, Alloy Irons, S.G.Irons, Carbon Steels, Stainless Steel, and duplex alloys created to meet national and international specification and standards.
Location – Kolar, India
Industry – Forging & Casting Industry & Refractory Industry
IcSoft ERP was implemented in two companies in this group

Business Situation

These two companies wanted to implement a business solution that integrated main pillars of a company like Marketing, Purchase, Manufacturing along with real-time inventory and financial information across the value chain.

Solution

They evaluated various available solutions and opted for IcSoft V3.00 mainly due to the ease of configuration/customization to meet their specific requirements. One of these companies is a refractory unit & manufacturing activity is completely different when compared to foundry & machine shop

Operational Challenges

The old system was having only inventory and shipping related information and other day to day transactions were manual. Hence monthly/annual marketing and production MIS was being generated manually. This required a lot of time and effort by the senior staff. The above requirements were tried out by company with couple of solution providers.

But, all these were not user friendly, and the operators could not manage the system. “It got miserably failed,” said a senior executive.

Both the companies were having a range – low to very high qualification levels. The solutions tried out earlier could not reach down the line of operating personnel due to their complexity and lack of visibility.

Benefits

• Integrated business solution across all locations.
• Real-time information for decision making.
• Effective, Fast, User Friendly system.
• Extensive Reports available for better analysis.

Current Status

• One company has been live on IcSoft since Nov 2011.
• Second company has been live on Icsoft since February 2012.

Testimonials

“We are very happy with the kind of commitment and effort put in by the team of InTouch to uccessfully implement their ERP- IcSoft, across all the departments of the company in less than 6 months. This is truly a great achievement and we are satisfied with their support team which is quick to respond to any difficulty faced by our users. I wish IcSoft all the very best for their upcoming ventures and am sure our association with InTouch will remain for the years to come.”
– Managing Director.

Solution & Result:

Only inventory & shipping was maintained in legacy system. Now all daily transactions are maintained in
IcSoft with improved speed, gave better visibility and better control. Earlier shipping transactions had
frequent mistakes in tax calculation during taxes which were eliminated by the IcSoft solution.

Data Integrity was an issue earlier. In IcSoft indent were made in the works, approval in system by
concerned got reflected for HO. The staff, sent enquiries, received quotations, placed PO and the user in
the works could see the status of his indent. Once material was received GRN was made & further
entries continued in IcSoft. Similarly with marketing, enquiry to order booking activities done at HO and
work order entry, production reporting and shipping was done at works.

Purchase, Finance activities handled at Bangalore HO & daily follow-ups from HO to Works were
continuously required earlier. This stopped completely as the user could see the status through IcSoft and
analyse the data.
Earlier when material arrived at works, no PO was available to inward This led to follow-up for PO with HO, delaying the inwarding & next concurrent actions. With IcSoft based on the PO made at HO, on receipt of material user was able to make the GRN against the PO created due to data integration from purchase module to inventory module.

Earlier only indent, GRN and issue activities were maintained and required more time. With IcSoft user had better visibility into the status of his indents placed and PO details, now works was doing additional
activities till bill accounting which included storage allocation and vat/excise claim. This reduced
considerably finance activities at HO.

MIS reports related to marketing & production were taking more time, nearly a week, to generate &
consumed most of their working time. With IcSoft reports were generated in the required formats within
seconds.

Earlier manpower was always busy in administrative tasks and unable to take up new activities. With IcSoft
around 3-4 core people knew major modules & were able to make all entries without any problem. Other
users were able to take up new assignments which improved the company’s efficiency.

HR Module was different earlier. Calculation of salary was based on MS Excel and was found to be a
difficult task. Additional settings were done in HR Module and new report was developed to fulfill their
payroll activity. With this new report they could generate required data within seconds it included OT
calculation at different periods, LCEG calculation & deduction, etc.

On getting enquiry cost estimate of product for quoting was done manually earlier and always
needed a qualified person. In IcSoft the costing data was documented and a new module – Product
Costing was developed. Any user with basic knowledge could now do costing in less than 2 minutes.