Office equipment/presentation equipment

AV Media company decided to implement Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Doing so, it obtained an integrated customer oriented information system covering all company activities and ensuring quality customer services.

Situation

AV Media was founded in 1992. Since that time it has been firmly established itself in the market of presentation and audiovisual equipment. Company operations include a wide range of activities from standard sales, through lease and servicing of projection and presentation equipment, system integration, to the presentation university project. It is obvious that the scope of the company activities is enormous. In order to cope with all the company involvement areas and to provide better quality services to their customers, the company management decided in early 2003 to implement a new information system. Microsoft Dynamics NAV was a great opportunity of introducing an integrated customer oriented information system.

Until that time, the company used several incompatible systems to manages its financial and sales activities which offered only limited or cumbersome access to the company data. The main information system was the FEIS financial system, which covered the needs of the financial department and the company stock control management and which was used in Prague offices and via a remote access in Brno. For the purposes of contact management, the Contact Database was used, containing all information regarding customers, including the contact history, business transactions (both sales and leases) as well as other information (company type, fields of business, account manager etc.). This system also generated some documents necessary for the business activities (such as customer orders, reservation and lease protocols) and it served for the purposes of keeping track of all lease department equipment, including utilization planning. The service department used a separate system which kept records of all sold projection equipment and served as a source of service event overviews with the ability of monitoring sales statistics, individual equipment defects and lamp life figures.

Separation of these systems generated problems of repeated entries of identical data. At best, these data were exchanged between the systems by means of batch transfers and the information was thus never fully up-to-date. This resulted in absence of timely and reliable aggregate financial information and indicators to manage sales and the entire company.

Business goals

• To create an integrated customer oriented information system covering all areas of the company activities.
• To link all departments and branches to the central system
• To create conditions for highly flexible development of the introduced information system both from the perspective of the number of users and system functionality.
• To link the information system to the document management system, to take advantage of the possibility of integrating the system with Microsoft Office, Internet etc.
• To simplify administration and regular maintenance of the company’s information systems.

Solution

The new ERP solution based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV was implemented at AV Media by Navisys – a Microsoft certified partner. The entire project was managed with the use of an international implementation methodology which made it possible to design the solution in such a way that the specified project goals could be achieved and the project schedule and defined budged were met. Introduction of Microsoft Dynamics NAV (version 3.60) meant that all sales, purchasing, servicing, stock keeping and accounting activities could be performed in an integrated ERP system (with the exception of the Salary application where the customer decided to use the current software).

The original FEIS financial system was fully replaced by Microsoft Dynamics NAV modules of Finance, Cash Administration, Sales and Receivables, Purchased and Payables and Warehouse Management. In the area of financial management the module of Fixed Assets can also be mentioned, which helps to keep track of information and movements of these types of assets. The information from the hitherto Contact Database were transferred to the Relationship Manager module. As a part of implementation Navisys developed also a special solution for the lease area and the standard module of Service Management was significantly extended, replacing the original system of the service department.

The Lease module supports all AV Media activities associated with letting projection and presentation equipment. It includes mainly creation of preliminary calculations, customer offers, orders and customer invoices. At any moment of the lease process it is possible to check availability of specific equipment or a group of equipment of the same type. The Lease module covers also the area of regular equipment and accessory checks.

The Service module keeps track of sold projection and presentation equipment and of planned dates, span and description of individual service events. This module was extended and amended in order to comply with all AV Media needs regarding maintenance of sold and owned equipment. In the initial stage, the Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution was launched for 35 concurrent users working at six locations in the Czech Republic. The system has been used across the entire organization structure of AV Media, including the top management.

Implementation schedule

The implementation was divided into the following phases:

Phase I (12/6/2003 – 1/9/2003) Phase I, which included implementation of the modules of Finance, Warehouse management, Relationship Management (fundamental), Cash Administration, Sales and Receivables, Purchased and Payables, Fixed Assets, and System Administration, was completed in this extent because of the start of AV Media’s fiscal year as of September 1, 2003. Migration of customer, supplier and financial data since 1996 was completed in this phase.

Phase II (1/9/2003 – 1/7/2004) Critical activity areas essential for AV Media operations were addressed in phase II. The modules of Lease and Relationship Manager were implemented and lease data migration completed.

Phase III (1/7/2004 – 1/12/2004) Due to a rather complex transfer of data from the service system, implementation of the Service module was not completed until phase III.

Phase IV In view of successful completion of all previous phases the system is going to be extended further, chiefly in the area of large customer orders (Project Management module). Efficient development of human resources will be backed by the Human Resources Management module.

Benefits:

• Thanks to the implementation of the new system AV Media experienced increase of work productivity – all information is now entered just once and the system provides it where needed.
• The system provides information support of all main customer processes, and in the end, it ensures timely and reliable data for making strategic decisions.
• All the users can simultaneously access the system online and all information they need for their jobs is immediately available to them.
• Intricate maintenance of data in several separate systems was removed
• All departments and all branches were connected to the central system

Additional benefits:

• Better customer service
• Possibility of extending the implemented information system both from the perspective of the number of users and the system functionality
• Universal access to information for all AV Media employees.
• Information provided in real time.
• Stock administration optimization.
• Immediate view of the company activities from the managerial perspective.
• Data administration in a single database.
• Elimination of repeated data entries and consequent reduction of errors
• Establishing links between the areas of sales, lease and service and the accounting and stock keeping

Products and technologies

• Microsoft Business Solution - Navision 3.60 CZ
• Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Office XP