FEATURE: ERP
Allied
Mobile
revamps
supply
chain with
Epicor
Analytics
Heath Huxtable, Executive
Head of Braintree, Vox
Keith Fenner, VP Sage Enterprise Africa
and Middle East
Aside from the economic
uncertainty that political
instability brings to the region,
Epicor’s Marais sees amongst
manufacturing customers that
in Africa there tends to be a
focus on revenue generating
projects in order to compete
against cheaper imports from
countries such as China. This
takes emphasis away from
revenue saving projects, such as
improving efficiencies with an
ERP system.
Huxtable sees that despite
technological advances,
the barriers to ERP have
merely evolved, rather than
disappeared: “Historically,
communication infrastructure
was considered an inhibitor but
with the advent of progressive
ICT frameworks across the
continent this has been
“Modern business
management
software is agile,
modular and rapid
to roll-out. They
are designed to
support modern
ways of working.”
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INTELLIGENTCIO
S
outh Africa based Allied Mobile
is a cellular product distributor
and third-party logistics provider
for the mobile telecommunications
industry in Africa.
Epicor ERP was implemented to
centrally manage Allied Mobile’s
business operations based in multiple
countries and geographic locations.
Allied Mobile began expansion of
these capabilities by upgrading
to the latest version of Epicor
ERP. Designed as a standardised,
scalable method for mining data and
centralising operational functions,
the newly updated system was
developed to address real-world
scenarios. It also uses a new mobile
framework that provides information
to virtually any mobile device.
Johani Marais, Epicor, Channel Manager Africa
mitigated. Previously there was a general lack
of awareness but with access to information
becoming increasingly easy through the Internet,
potential buyers are doing research and they are
generally becoming aware of solutions available
without the need for companies to do any
marketing of products available.”
Huxtable now attributes budget as a dominant
challenge for enterprises today: “The majority
of these products are denominated in foreign
currencies, the currency cost for every product
can make the product fairly expensive for African
businesses. Limited skill set available in-country,
coupled with a niche skill set required, as well as
consulting costs tend to make up a significant
portion of the total ERP system.” n
Objectives and implementation
Prior to starting an ERP
implementation, a vendor such as
Epicor will engage with the end
user through a detailed workshop
to understand business challenges,
their vision, and where they want
to be. This includes a gap analysis,
where the vendor solution will fit in,
and the risk. Based on this discussion
the vendor identifies the solution
and the road map.
“With Allied Mobile, we have gone
through that process and one of the
key solutions that was implemented
was the analytics. This was to allow
them to look into different aspects of
their business from stock availability,
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