Based in Bangalore, India, Snowman Frozen Foods Ltd. Is a Cold Chain Logistics Service

Microsoft Dynamics Customer Solution Case Study

Cold Chain Logistics Provider Increases Business and Efficiency with New Business Solution

rd Overview “We are able to invoice all our customers by 3 of every Country or region: India month across all 18 locations. It’s faster, more accurate Industry: Transportation and Logistics and saves almost 2 person days every month.” Customer Profile Prashant Deshpande, Head Information Technology and Administration, Snowman Frozen Foods Ltd. Snowman Frozen Foods is amongst the pioneers of cold supply chain in India with a nationwide presence connecting more than 100 cities and distributing to more than 4,400 outlets. It provides integrated logistics Through this modern technology driven cold storage warehouse, services and goods storage. Snowman Frozen Foods is addressing the ever growing complexity in

Business Situation the cold storage management by helping its customers reduce waste Snowman had multiple disparate applications and cost of handling, increase shelf life and storage of perishable including Everest for inventory management, Tally for financial transactions and Microsoft products through efficient management of cold chain network. To Office Excel to manage transportation. Thus, achieve this efficiently and grow its revenues, the organization also assimilating information at month-end involved many person days to reconcile the needed a solution to support, enhance and streamline all its operations. data. Blue Star Infotech with its strong expertise and in-depth understanding

Solution of the industry, implemented Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The solution With the help of Microsoft® Gold Certified saves over 2 person days in generating relevant reports and Partner, Blue Star Infotech, Snowman deployed Microsoft® Dynamics™ NAV 2009 consolidating financial information. at 18 locations including head office in Bangalore.

Benefits Timely billing improves profitability Improves efficiency with better resource utilization Real time information increases business opportunities Improves customer relationship Microsoft Dynamics Customer Solution Case Study

Cold Chain Logistics Provider Increases Business and Efficiency with New Business Solution Situation Based in Bangalore, India, Snowman Frozen In the inventory package, users from 18 Foods Ltd. is a cold chain logistics service locations logged in through remote desktop to provider, whose investors include Gateway connect to the centralized server where in close Distriparks Ltd., Mitsubishi Corporation, to 450 customer-specific databases were Mitsubishi Logistics Corporation and Nitchirei maintained. Consolidating this data for monthly Logistics Group of Japan and IFC (World Bank and annual reports was a herculean task. group). It offers services such as transportation, storage, handling and retail distribution of Snowman maintained every customer’s data in entire spectrum of chilled and frozen foods a separate database for each branch resulting in including processed foods, fast foods, meats, multiple codes for the same stock keeping unit ice creams, dairy products apart from fruits and (SKU) and multiple customer codes. vegetables to restaurants and institutions across Standardization of all these codes into a single India. code was necessary to avoid duplication in billing. It also wanted to map retail business. The state-of-the-art infrastructure that meets Each customer who stores with Snowman has international standards is powered by the his own set of customers and vendors, which strength of over 200 trained employees. Its long are location specific. Standardizing all such arm of distribution covers more than 100 cities vendor and customer codes across India to throughout the country. It owns 18 cold storage eliminate redundancy was essential. facilities, 12 ISO 22000:2009 and 13 ISO 14001:2005 certified warehouses and operates a Snowman also wanted to optimize use and fleet of about 100 owned and contracted management of its fleet of vehicles. In addition, refrigerated trucks. The annual revenues of the it was very difficult to generate meaningful company for financial year 2009-10 were U.S. MIS on the fleet and its operations. Real time $7.6 million (INR 34.5 crore). information on available storage, its location and pallet occupancy report would bring greater Snowman was using disparate applications. It efficiency into the entire cold storage process. was using Everest for inventory and warehouse The existing information was available at management. Tally was deployed to manage all regular intervals, however, delays and the accounting operations and financial inaccurate information was brining transactions. Microsoft Office Excel-based sluggishness into the business. solution was used to manage the fleet of vehicles, their routes, billing and profitability details. Solution Identifying the need of an integrated system to The sales and payment entries from the effectively run the business operations and to warehousing software were replicated in achieve the ambitious growth plans, Snowman accounting software resulting in data evaluated various ERP products available in the duplication. Similarly for statutory reports such market other than Microsoft products. But none as sales tax, sales data was extracted from the other than Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 met Everest and corresponding entry was created in the unique business requirements. “In complex Tally. Due to data inaccuracy and duplicity, business scenario like ours, we needed to most of the month-end billings went for deploy base modules along with extensive multiple iterations and consumed unwarranted customization for warehousing and time. transportation. Dynamics NAV scored over

36 other ERP solutions as it is quick and easy to “We get up-to-date, accurate location-specific customize and user friendly,” states AM stocks, can view the stock status for every Sundar, Chief Financial Officer and Company customer in real-time and generate statements Seretary, Snowman Frozen Foods Ltd. and MIS reports by 3rd of every month,” states “Moreover the solution is cost effective and Sridharan, Senior Manager-Information provided all the functionality within our Technology, Snowman Frozen Foods Ltd. planned budget.” Integration of warehouse and inventory The management then looked for an adept management functionality with financial partner with prior experience in deploying management, customer relationship warehouse, fleet and finance modules. Blue management, supply chain management and Star Infotech (BSI), a Microsoft Gold Certified other business processes ensure efficient Partner was chosen because of its skilled team communication and collaboration throughout and its past experiences in the logistics the organization and with trade partners. industry. The implementation began in December 2009 and the solution went live in April 2010. It was deployed simultaneously Benefits across 18 locations including head office and all Microsoft Dynamics NAV helps in warehouses. The solution was deployed for 30 reconciliation of stocks vis-à-vis book stocks in users with all the base modules, General a real-time basis.“With the help of new Ledger, Trade and Logistics, Warehouse and business solution, we are able to boost Inventory Management. employee productivity, make more timely decisions, gain real-time visibility into critical BSI tailored the solution to include Fleet business data and thus increase margins and Management to address all processes and issues profitability,” explains AM Sundar. “We have related to transportation. The new customized thus achieved a low total cost of ownership.” module automates key processes such as vehicle management and maintenance, capacity Timely Billing Improves Profitability management, fuel management and route Snowman charges its customers for the space management. It was integrated with other occupied by their stocks in its cold stores. There division such as Freezer and Consignment are nearly 21 variants of chargeable rates Division. BSI’s Excelsior methodology used coupled with 3 different billing cycles making extensively ensured quick implementation. the revenue generating model quite complex. Doing it manually took 7 days resulting in All the key business processes, multiple delayed billing and hence revenue loss. “Post revenue models, requirement of maintaining Dynamics NAV, we are able to invoice all our inventory without the value reflecting in chart customers by 3rd of every month across all 18 of accounts, complex warehouse rent locations,” says Prashant Deshpande, Head calculation, contract management were mapped Information Technology and Administration, fully. Moreover the solution handles invoicing Snowman Frozen Foods Ltd. “It’s faster, more and collection, maintenance of customers’ accurate and saves almost 2 person days every inventories, handling primary and secondary month.” Timely billing thus improves cash flow customers and tagging them to item or item and hence profitability. variants along with complex billing process that includes warehouse storage, customer-wise Improves Efficiency with Better Resource contracts, promotion offers etc. Utilization

46 The new solution manages internal and external positive feedback has assured us of enhanced resources more efficiently, thus improves satisfaction level and hence retention.” operational efficiency. Since the data entry needs to be done at one time only, a lot of data Presents Competitive Advantage with repetition at branch level has come down Improved Decision Making resulting in the better utilization of manpower Prior to Microsoft Dynamics NAV, resource. consolidating information was a time- consuming process that resulted in delayed Real Time Information Increases Business reporting and hindered decision making. But Opportunities after deploying the new business solution, real- Earlier, lack of real time information about time data is always available online for review pallet occupancy and storage space across by top management, making the decision- locations resulted in loss of potential customer. making process quicker, thus giving advantage Post Dynamics NAV, availability of over the competitors. Information on real-time information on real time basis to the top basis related to available storage space across management and the functional heads about the locations and pallet occupancy report helps in key information like the pallet occupancy by taking swift decision on the storage space to be warehouse and its location helps in serving provided to some of the customers as well as on more customers. This in-turn has improved the the placement of vehicle for pick-up etc. business opportunities. AM Sundar concludes, “In the highly Improves Customer Relationship competitive market, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Snowman as a customer-centric company has helped us with efficient workflows, intends to build long term relationship with its improved visibility, increased profits, optimized customers and thus aimed at total customer productivity, greater customer satisfaction and satisfaction. “With tighter integration and reduced costs.” The solution’s flexibility, automated processes, we’re more flexible and modular structure enables the addition of new can quickly respond to customer queries or custom functionalities over time to match the resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction,” growth and evolution of the business. explains AM Sundar.

With Dynamics NAV, it is easier to create reports which show outlet-wise and product- wise sales of fast, slow or non moving stocks. These reports are very important for customers as these help them in planning their inventory and focusing on sales. These reports are automatically scheduled and mailed to business partners on a specific time and date in desired formats with the help of Auto Email System presented by Dynamics NAV.

“The new business solution has mapped the customers’ SKU codes to our codes, giving them a detailed report on their stocks with more clarity,” continues Prashant. “Customers’

56 Microsoft Dynamics Independent Software Vendors and IT solutions Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, for enterprises provides it with an unique adaptable business management solutions that advantage to cross-leverage experiences in enables you and your people to make business creating solutions for enterprises both custom decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft and products across domains and technology Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft platforms. software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, BSI is backed by the reputed Blue Star Group, so they can get up and running quickly and ranked among Asia’s best sub billion focus on what’s most important. And because it businesses by Forbes. BSI is a Microsoft Gold is from Microsoft, it easily works with the Certified Partner, Oracle Gold Partner, SAS systems that your company already has Silver Partner, Kentico Partner, Sitecore implemented. By automating and streamlining Partner, Amdocs Partner. financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.

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About Blue Star Infotech Blue Star Infotech (BSI) helps global mid market enterprises derive measurable business outcomes through the use of IT. BSI partners with its clients to understand the business pain points, arrive at the appropriate IT led interventions and manage successful implementation. Using its deep understanding of the mid market segment, and drawing upon its long standing track record in creating IT solutions, BSI is able to deliver affordable and relevant solutions through client-friendly flexible engagement models.

Blue Star Infotech’s dual expertise in building software products for industry-leading