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Thursday, 9 October 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
“Constant increase in quality standards and improvement in product packaging has helped us meet global demand,” Huzefa Akbarally said.
Every week the company purchases tea at the Colombo Tea Auction, which is then blended, packed and exported.
“Initially we conducted a survey and study of many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions that have a presence in Sri Lanka including visiting their clients’ sites. A common thread amongst all the IFS clients was the quality of implementation. We were also very impressed that users of IFS seemed to be empowered by the system,” Akbarally stated.
“Another major factor with us choosing the IFS system was the fact that they have a strong presence in Sri Lanka with many resource personnel based in their office in Wellawatte. This gave us confidence in their team strength and capability in implementing a solution in Sri Lanka. Now that we have been live for the past two years, we are reaping the benefits of a well implemented ERP solution,” he acknowledged.
He also emphasised on the fact that the company was currently in the process of improving their management reporting using the system and was also working on improvements in order to stay on par with current demands. The company had deployed IFS module applications IFS Tea Blend Management, IFS Tea Auction Management, IFS Manufacturing, IFS Distribution, IFS Financials and IFS Shipment Management.
In keeping with Akbar’s prospective ideology, Akbarally stated that their business relationship with IFS had been a very promising one, providing quality customer service in terms of business processes. “Over our deployment period of the IFS applications, we initially commenced with 70 users and to date, have expanded to a total of 145 users,” he explained.
Commenting further on how IFS has helped boost the company’s efficiency, he added: “The IFS Applications that were implemented helped eliminate duplicity and produced consistent information at all times. As of now, we are able to make decisions with accurate information instantly. Further, we have also noticed the extent to which our staff have shown keen interest and have engaged more with the business as they too have realised the benefit of having accurate, consistent and relevant information available as and when they want.
“Our work force has started embracing these systems. This way, we from the management get more visibility of operations ranging from inventory levels, customer status, profitability, WIP status, etc. Before IFS was implemented, we used to get this information manually and we had the challenge of going through verification, issues of getting it on time etc. As we have a flexible approach handling our customers and their demands we are so much dependable on the visibility of back end operations to achieve profitability. Having IFS Applications helped us meet that objective.”
In terms of Akbar Brothers clients, he also disclosed that IFS has helped the company provide a better service as well as helping serve customers profitably. “By having consolidated our ERP processes, we were able to cut down significantly on waste, staff time on multiple manual entries of information and most importantly, we have been able to maintain optimum inventory levels and improve inventory turnaround time. Due to the visibility of customer information we have been able to monitor debtors closely as well,” Akbarally added.
Akbar Brothers is now looking at enhancing system usage by visiting and talking to other IFS customers in the country, together with the aim of attributing towards a more knowledge sharing basis from IFS and looking at other modules. In keeping with the future outlook, the company will also be looking at upgrading to the latest version as Akbar Brothers has been up to date with many other interesting features in upcoming editions. Akbar currently runs on the IFS App version.
