Petro-chemical company, LVSA Valves, has increased its productivity levels by replacing five different business systems with Softline Pastel`s Evolution product.
According to Kamlan Naidoo, LVSA Valves general manager, the company was forced to look for an alternate accounting system when it decided to acquire 49% of the company, currently held by an American shareholder.
"One of the results of becoming a 100% South African owned company was that we needed an accounting system to replace the AS400 system which was run from Houston in America. We have also been through an ISO 9000 accreditation and it was very important that the new system complemented the management of the company`s processes," he says.
Steven Cohen, MD of Softline Pastel, says given the fact that the LVSA Valves imports valves for the petrochemical industry from Europe, America and China, it needed a robust system that could manage a host of needs including distribution, stock, foreign currency and the general accounting functions.
"Pastel`s strategy to expand its target market to larger businesses with its Evolution software is proving most successful," he says.
Efficiency
Naidoo says the installation replaced the five different systems it used previously, making Evolution the sole overarching system, with the management of the accounts, stock taking and CRM all coming in-house.
"And when a stock take that took an entire weekend to do is cut down to six hours and compiling management accounts is reduced from six days to the push of a button, we really began to realise the benefits of migrating our business systems to Pastel Evolution," he says.
The ease of reporting and analysis on our accounts receivable enabled LVSA Valves to cut its debtors book from R6 million to R4.3 million and on the accounts payable side, it is also able to easily identify which suppliers need to be paid, Naidoo says.
The order entry module has also done wonders for the sales process, Naidoo says. "Because we`re a sales organisation, managing the customer sales process is very important. Previously, we had one person in administration doing order entries, and now sales reps are able to check inventory levels and process the order up until invoicing, making the whole process much more efficient."
Customisation
Naidoo says one of the benefits of Evolution is that customised fields can be set up within the program - enabling him to do analysis specific to LVSA Valves` business.
"In the user-defined field I am able to set up the black economic empowerment status of our suppliers and analyse them against our procurement policy. I have also utilised the user-defined fields extensively in the inventory module to identify the various items we have in stock.
"Evolution also enables me to grant different levels of access to employees depending on what their job description entails. And as we expand and take on the other companies into the LVSA Valves group, we`ll be able to manage them through Evolution as well," he says.
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