Sun, Star Cebu, Thursday, February 21, 2008

While business process software has been generally viewed as a privilege of large enterprises, a Filipino electronics and motorcycle parts and trading firm has proven that such solutions also have a place in the future of growing companies.

Sirlitz Inc. – a dealer of computers, home appliances, motorcycles and spare parts with 32 branches, mostly in Mindanao – recently decided it was time to automate its inventory and accounting system via SAP Business One, SAP’s solution for small and medium-sized companies.

“Clearly, the role of IT has shifted. Once seen primarily as a tool for reducing costs and automating processes, companies are increasingly relying on IT as part of their business strategy,” said Krish Datta, managing director of SAP Philippines.

“Today, many companies in the small-to-medium segment are making the most of technology that allows deep collaboration and innovation economically feasible. Such an IT-driven network offers them flexible, consistent collaboration across all business processes, and therefore, new, more relevant relationships.”

Sirlitz Inc. is part of a growing category of small and medium businesses in the country that have discovered that business software systems can improve efficiency and profitability in the long term. In the case of Sirlitz, the company chose to utilize the finance and inventory business processes in the SAP Business One software to manage accounting and inventory in their spare parts division.

“We only started the spare parts division of the business a year ago but the stocks started piliing up. A motorcycle, for example has around 1, 000 parts, making it impossible to have an accurate inventory by manual procedures,” explained Ryna Gillamac, Sirlitz Inc. co-managing director.

“Financial reporting was also a slow and painful proves, because revenues need to be tracked for various parts – this takes a lot of time and effort from our accounting staff, and often, critical information is missed or misrepresented,” Gillamac added.

Since its employees are primarily mechanics, Sirlitz needed an automated inventory management system that was easy to use and to understand even for individuals without a strong experience in PC-based tools.

“The main challenge was to teach our staff to use the system,” explained Gillamac, but training and support from ObTech, SAP’s implementation partner, helped them work out the kinks.

Gillamac said Sirlitz is only awaiting the return of investment before acquiring more business software to streamline their processes even more. (PR).