Vodyanoy Expands with SAP® Business One: A Little Goes a Long Way

Russian equipment-installation firm Vodyanoy hardly ranks as a major corporation, with only 36 employees. However, as it expanded its range of water and heating services, its IT needs quickly ballooned. Vodyanoy successfully turned to SAP Business One to provide affordable information integration and rapid report generation.

The Vodyanoy Company, established in 1997 in Perm, Russia, specializes in the installation of water, heating-supply, and water-preparation systems, plus wholesale and retail sale of sanitary ware, components, and accessories.

Vodyanoy supplies over 7,000 items, including radiators, convectors, metal-reinforced plastic pipes, fittings, pumping equipment, and other products from a wide range of suppliers. The company's 36 employees generate annual revenues of over 15 million rubles (around 0.53 million U.S.Dollar).
Though initially involved mainly in systems installation, the company has developed dynamically and is now divided into three lines of business - wholesale, retail, and equipment installation. Its specialists perform everything from development of design documentation through to the installation of equipment and communication lines.

As its range of services expanded and the number of suppliers and customers grew, information flows increased, and business processes grew tremendously more complicated. The company's three business areas found themselves saddled with three different systems that were not integrated: Consolidation of the separate information flows required multiple entry of data, extensive working time, and increased attention to information collection and processing to avoid errors. Furthermore, lack of complete and timely information made it difficult for Vodyanoy's management to make balanced decisions or create an efficient model of interaction with the company's customers and suppliers.

Finding a way to Implement Planning

The company had developed key performance indicators to assess the efficiency of both individual subdivisions and the company as a whole, establish a system of employee incentives, build an organizational structure of management, and formalize individual procedures. However, the fragmentation of information flow prevented putting these plans for improvement into effect. An integrated information system was obviously needed to implement the plans, maintain a high quality of customer service, and further expand the customer base.

This system would need to meet several important criteria: It must increase the speed of both report generation and information processing; reduce the time spent on multiple entry of information, while decreasing the risk of errors; ensure the receipt of data on the performance of subdivisions to aid in assessing employee efficiency and motivation; and ensure the implementation of the company's development strategy.

After comparing options, Vodyanoy's management chose the SAP Business One solution for small and midsize enterprises. SAP Business One fully covered the company's requirements for ease of employee use, low total cost of ownership, rapid generation of reports at any level of complexity, and short implementation time. It also offered flexible tools for analyzing relationships with suppliers and customers - an especially vital concern for Vodyanoy.
To implement the project, Vodyanoy engaged SAP SME partner Ecoil-Inform. During the project, the company's business processes were analyzed and adjustments made to bring requirements as closely as possible into line with the packaged functions of the solution. Data was then transferred from the existing databases, the system tested, and SAP Business One successfully put into operation - all with a total implementation time of two months.

Once SAP Business One was in use, Vodyanoy's management quickly noted a dramatic reduction in time spent on processing information and entering source documents. The solution also provided daily, updated reports that enabled management to have an accurate picture of the business for timely, balanced decisions.

SAP Business One brought a single system to manage all the financial operations of the company and to optimize the tracking of goods among the company's warehouses. And the ability to analyze the performance of each subdivision provided a coherent system for assessing employee efficiency and motivation.

But perhaps the key advantage obtained from SAP Business One was the ability to ensure an individualized approach to each customer, resulting in a substantial increase in loyalty and considerable sales growth. This was made possible because the company now maintains a full history of purchases by each customer, as well as current and accurate information on the availability of goods at its warehouses.

As summed up by Vodyanoy director Dmitry N. Spiryaev, "SAP Business One gave us an efficient tool that enabled us to eliminate obstacles to growth and further the development of our company's business. We solved problems related to managing internal business processes, and this enabled us to focus completely on customer relations, increase the quality of service, and expand the customer base substantially."


Source: www.SAP.com
(March 13, 2006)

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