Asia Motors Uses BI to Cut Costs

Running on ERP, its various business processes like planning, purchase, production, sales, and finance were falling short of providing complete visibility to all its users, especially for the senior management. Timely availability of data in the required format to enable decision-making was a challenge for the company's operational users.

Spotty data access was slowing down collaboration and efficiency while costs were escalating. Umesh Mehta, VP-IT, AMW, knew that he needed to change the way the company works. So, he turned to business intelligence.

"To understand the current overall scenario and for quick and user friendly MIS reports, BI had become imperative for us," he says.

BI gave AMW innovative tools and an agile infrastructure to generate the kind of business insights managers needed. The project was initiated with output from the ERP in an Excel format. A database in SQL server was created and connected to the BI platform for reporting and analysis.  The Rs 8 lakh implementation took under two days and users were trained over a week.

"It was tough to get the top management engage on the subject of BI, especially with the economic slowdown," says Mehta adding," We came up with an idea of doing a proof of concept.  We generated reports from SAP that helped understand the data in terms of sales, warranty trends, and so on. It won the approval of the top management."

The benefits that BI brought are hard to miss.  With improved visibility into business performance, AMW expects to grow by 10 percent year on year. BI's access to information fulfils every department's needs, aiding quick decision-making.

"Costs have reduced by 20 percent and employee productivity has increased by 25 to 30 percent," says Mehta. With BI, AMW can now clearly correlate low sales volumes with high warranty cost in certain products and spot trends quickly, predict risk more accurately and manage inventory more efficiently, giving them a definite competitive edge.

The Person Behind It

Umesh Mehta, VP-IT

Asia Motor Works

"Improved financial visibility through BI has helped move us into overdrive."