Customer Solution Case Study
/ Telecoms Firm Improves Efficiency by 50 Per Cent with Business Management Tools
“Our overall efficiency has increased by 50 per cent with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. With our new reporting and accounting package, we have one central focus.”
Luke Hempel, Finance Executive, Blue Label Telecoms South Africa Distribution
Prepaid airtime reseller Comm Express Services needed a new business management system for 300,000 transactions a month, because its previous technology was no longer fit for purpose. After a market evaluation, the South African firm chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. Overall efficiency has improved by 50 per cent, monthly accounts are now available five days earlier than before, and business data that took a week to produce is now ready in a few hours.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published March 2010
Business Needs
Comm Express Services in South Africa is a leading reseller of electronic vouchers. The company is a subsidiary of the Blue Label Telecoms Group, listed on the South African Stock Exchange. In 2007, Blue Label formed a global strategic business partnership with Microsoft whereby Microsoft distributes products through the Blue Label global transactional environment.
With more than 300,000 sales
transactions a month, Comm Express
Services needed a cost effective but high performing business management system to replace its existing accounting software. The organisation’s aim was to find a solution that could become standard across the rest of the Blue label’s 30-plus companies.
Luke Hempel, Finance Executive, Blue Label Telecoms South Africa Distribution, says: “As a group, we decided to seek a multisite licensing agreement for as many of our group companies as possible.”
Comm Express Services has five different transaction layers, which record daily customer sales on terminals. Hempel, who was also formerly Group Financial Controller at Comm Express Services, says: “All of these sales transactions are consolidated on a daily basis per terminal and reconciled by the business management software. We were keeping up to six months of data, but the system was slow—it could take a week to obtain reliable financial data for any given period.
“We also needed to integrate new business intelligence (BI) tools with a better database management structure and improve our overall efficiency. Finally, we wanted to ensure faster month-end reporting from the business management software to the main accounting system, giving better visibility of performance.”
Solution
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Strategix Business Solutions, a leading independent software vendor in South Africa, replaced the previous business management tools with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 and also implemented Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
Work began on deploying Microsoft Dynamics NAV in the second quarter of 2009, and the system went live three months later. Rabe Pienaar, Director, Strategix Business Solutions, says: “There would have been major cost implications if the company had chosen the alternative, which was an SAP solution. The added value we gave with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 was to design the solution as a template, with a view to minimising costs when deploying to other group companies with similar transactional businesses.”
One of the reasons for the choice of Microsoft Dynamics NAV by Comm Express Services was its native BI capabilities. Pienaar says: “Tight integration with Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet software ensures that Comm Express Services can easily export data for analysis and manipulation. The solution also meets the company’s requirements for data management and can quickly supply customised reports with SQL Server 2008.”
Benefits
The Microsoft solution handles more than 300,000 sales transactions a month, but with improved data integrity and a significant time saving in data processing compared with the previous system. Automated bank reconciliations for one day take between 30 minutes and an hour to complete. Hempel says: “Our overall efficiency has increased by 50 per cent with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. With our new reporting and accounting package, we have one central focus.”
· Real-time data that took a week is available in just a few hours. Comm Express Services can generate real-time data in just an hour, compared to a week with the previous toolset.
· Month-end accounts close five days earlier than before. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, Comm Express Services now closes its month-end accounts by the tenth day of the following month instead of the fifteenth day.
· Agreement saves 35 per cent on licensing. Pienaar says: “The multisite agreement with Microsoft has ensured a saving of around 35 per cent on licensing costs for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009.”
· Processing huge volumes of transactions is quicker and easier. The solution handles 1,240 automated bank reconciliations a month and provides a detailed audit trail for large volumes of transactions. Date and timestamps are recorded for every daily processing batch.
· Template solution helps other companies in the group. The Comm Express Services solution can be replicated using the template in three other similar Blue Label companies in South Africa, and to others elsewhere in the group, because they use similar business processes.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published March 2010