4-page Case Study - Posted 6/29/2006
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Greek Paper Mill Reduces Ordering Administration Time by 75 Percent
To maintain profitability and its position as the largest private paper-making company in Greece, Thrace Paper Mills continuously strives to increase production efficiency and minimize costs. Its most recent efforts included creating a solution based on the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, and Microsoft Commerce Server 2002 to automate order entry and provide an online store for customers to place orders directly. As a result of this implementation, the company was able to decrease the administration time per order by 75 percent and reduce administration costs. Through this solution, Thrace Paper Mills also gained more effective and flexible reporting capabilities, which enhanced business decision making. And, because it acquired Microsoft server software through an Open Business Volume Licensing agreement, it reduced license management time by two hours per month.
Situation
Thrace Paper Mills S.A., part of the Zeritis Group, produces 55,000 tons of tissue paper products annually from pulp and recycled paper. Its product line includes bathroom tissue, paper towels, napkins, facial tissue, and table covers, which are marketed to supermarket chains and wholesalers in Greece and around the world. About half of those products are sold under the “Diana” brand, while the remainder is private labeled.
The paper mill has 45 PC users distributed across three sites—25 in Athens, 15 in Xanthi, and five in Salonica. It also has 60
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Our enhanced reporting capabilities have helped us to improve our decision-making process. Now we are able to more efficiently evaluate the important elements within a huge amount of data. |
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George Batouvakis, IT Manager, Thrace Paper Mills S.A. |
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salespeople who contact customers throughout Greece and through its subsidiaries in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Egypt. Until recently, salespeople submitted handwritten orders to a company contact who then had to enter the information manually into the custom enterprise resource planning system, making it a tedious and cumbersome process.
As with many manufacturers, Thrace is continuously working to streamline the process and minimize its production and distribution costs to increase profitability and expedite revenue. To accomplish this, Thrace Paper Mills needed to:
- Expedite the ordering process to more efficiently plan production to reduce inventory costs
- Improve its reporting procedures to improve the quality of management decisions
- Maximize the effectiveness of its marketing to increase sales volume and the return on its marketing investment
With these goals in mind, the company's management looked for a solution that would enable the sales force to enter orders directly from the field into the enterprise resource planning system. Such a system would then automatically process the orders, sending the necessary information to production, warehousing, and distribution operations. The managers also wanted to create an online store where customers could order directly and monitor their accounts. The solution that Thrace Paper Mills executives chose needed to be easy to manage and maintain and needed to include security to help safeguard the network infrastructure from external attacks.
Solution
In 2004, Thrace Paper Mills migrated to the Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 operating system and created applications based on the Microsoft .NET Framework (an integral component of the Windows® operating system that provides a programming model and runtime for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications) and the Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 database system. At that time, Thrace acquired server licenses for SQL Server 2000, Microsoft Commerce Server 2002 Standard Edition, and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 through a Microsoft Open Business Volume Licensing agreement. Thrace Paper Mills also acquired 20 licenses for Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. The remaining desktop software and Windows Mobile® 2003 software for Pocket PC Phone Edition were acquired preinstalled through Microsoft Certified Original Equipment Manufacturers.
Thrace Paper Mills equipped its sales force with Qtek 2020 Windows Mobile powered smartphones that run the Mobile Force application for managing online orders. Now Thrace salespeople submit orders directly to the corporate network through their smartphones. Each order is then automatically forwarded to the appropriate department and entered into the system—without any manual involvement.
In addition, the company is creating a secure external online store, based on Commerce Server 2002, to enable customers to submit orders directly. Microsoft ISA Server 2004 will provide firewall security and Web caching capabilities for the online store.
The company stores its inventory, production, and accounting data in SQL Server 2000 databases and generates sales, operations, and accounting reports through Office 2003 applications. The Office 2003 applications are integrated with a customized application.
Benefits
By building an automated order entry and reporting solution based on the .NET Framework and implementing an online store based on Commerce Server 2002, Thrace Paper Mills was able to expedite order processing, improve decision making, and increase IT productivity.
Expedited Order Processing
Now that Thrace Paper Mills salespeople can submit orders directly to the computing network, the company has eliminated the manual order entry labor and expedited order processing. The automated system saves an estimated 10 minutes per order. “Our orders are now created instantly and forwarded auto¬matically to the appropriate depart¬ments,” says George Batouvakis, IT Manager for Thrace Paper Mills. “This maximizes the efficiency of our internal and external processes. When we complete our implementation of Commerce Server [2002], our customers will have another ordering alternative that will save additional time.”
In the first two months after implementation, this solution reduced order turnaround time by 75 percent.
Improved Decision Making
Now, through the power of SQL Server 2000 as well as the reporting capabilities in Office 2003 applications, Thrace Paper Mills is able to make better use of the large volume of data collected from its production, sales, and warehousing operations. “Our enhanced reporting capabilities have helped us to improve our decision-making process,” says Batouvakis “Now we are able to more efficiently evaluate the important elements within a huge amount of data.”
Increased IT Productivity
The Microsoft Open Business Volume Licensing agreement enables the Thrace IT department to manage and track its licenses through the Microsoft eOpen Web site where Microsoft assigns authorization numbers and posts order confirmations. This saves license management time, which can be devoted to value-added endeavors. “With Open License, there’s no need to spend time and effort searching our computers for licenses,” says Batouvakis, “Now it’s easy to keep track of the licenses through the eOpen Web site and more accurately forecast our software costs.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System™ is a line of integrated and manageable server software designed to reduce the complexity and cost of IT. Windows Server System enables you to spend less time and budget on managing your systems so that you can focus your resources on other priorities for you and your business.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/
For more information about Thrace Paper Mills S.A. products and services visit the Web site at:
http://www.zeritis.gr/
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