Watawala Plantations accelerates digital transformation with cloud-backed enterprise tech solutions

Core team members with the Change Management team: Positha Lokugamage, Gayan Dehideniya, Saman Kumara, Chaminda Thushara, Anton, and Krishaan Shivakumar

• Implements SAP Business One ERP solution and plantation digitisation product iHarvest

Further accelerating digital transformation capabilities across the organisation, Sri Lanka’s leading diversified agribusiness company Watawala Plantations (CSE:WATA) announced that the company had implemented SAP Business One HANA Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform and iHarvest, a home-grown plantation digitalisation product.  

SAP Business One, a simple yet powerful business solution, will help Watawala Plantations to streamline their operations and provide access to critical real-time information by automating key business processes. This will provide improved visibility to the company’s core operations. Perfect Business Solutions Services (PBSS) Group, an SAP Gold Partner, was selected to facilitate the implementation.

 SAP Business One is an affordable and easy-to-use business management solution for companies. Encompassing CRM capabilities as an intrinsic part of core business automation, SAP Business One supports Watawala Plantations’ standard business processes, such as financial management, purchasing, inventory, operations, and human resources. The solution will also help the Company to streamline processes, gain a greater insight into the business to act fast and make decisions based on real-time information, helping Watawala Plantations drive profitable growth.

Additionally, Watawala Plantations has implemented ‘iHarvest’, a plantation digitisation platform developed by Sri Lankan startup Itechro Limited. The revolutionary platform has been developed to address common issues faced by agricultural enterprises to create a digitally-enabled plantation ecosystem by connecting each entity via a digital platform to redefine everyday interactions creating value for every stakeholder sustainably. 

With the implementation of this intuitive digitalisation platform, Watawala Plantations is geared to drive the next-level transformation in Sri Lanka’s agriculture sector with the ability to automate its field operations with analytical capabilities, deriving real-time insights for continuous improvements. This will lead to significant cost savings, greater transparency of field operations, better planning of operations and improved harvesting cycles. Key features include dashboards, field assignments, attendance capturing, harvest record management, and mill operation support with weighbridge integration.

“Both SAP Business One and iHarvest empower us to make smart, confident decisions faster by capturing all critical information across key business processes – making it instantly available company-wide. You have clear visibility into how your business is performing and greater confidence in the information used to make decisions. Implementing these platforms is a testament to the company’s unwavering efforts to accelerate digital transformation. With the power of these solutions and the oversight and cutting-edge analytics they provide, I can say that Watawala Plantations is drawing the roadmap of our future safely,” said Watawala Plantations Chief Executive Officer Binesh Pananwala. 

Watawala Plantations Senior Manager – Finance and Project Leader Eranda Kapukotuwa said, “As a company, we were looking to optimise time management and increase overall efficiency with the help of the right tools while facilitating the company’s digital transformation. Implementing SAP Business One and iHarvest provides a digitalisation roadmap with complete data visibility and cutting-edge analytics, offering reliable, integrated platforms with accurate real-time data for better decision-making. This helps us significantly improve our overall efficiency with a full process oversight and monitoring automated reporting dashboards.”