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financial management with LintraMax system | |
| M.P. Evans boosts plantation operations,
financial management with LintraMax system "In LintraMax Plantation Director, we got a system which fits perfectly with our business needs. It’s a world-class system and we are very pleased with our decision to deploy it in our Indonesian operations." Colin Wilby, Group Finance and Systems Director, P.T. Evans Indonesia M.P. Evans Group PLC operates oil-palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. It is cultivating new plantations in Bangka Island and East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The group decided to consolidate the management of its Indonesian plantations in 2005. It wanted to put in place an integrated plantation management system for its Indonesian business to handle not only finance but also plantation operations. M.P. Evans selected the Microsoft .NET-based LintraMax Plantation Director, which is developed specially for the plantation sector and fully integrates plantation operations with financial modules. The system enhances the group’s plantation operations and financial management efficiency, provides in-depth and flexible reporting capabilities, and an internal control system which enables it to reduce inefficiency and wastages as well as fraud and theft. Situation M.P. Evans Group PLC is listed on the AIM exchange in London and the group's assets consist of oil-palm plantations (both majority and minority held) in Indonesia and Malaysia, and beef-cattle interests in Australia. While the group plans to exit from its plantation investments in Malaysia, it is increasing its total Indonesian areas under oil palm to between 70,000 and 100,000 hectares of environmentally sustainable oil palm over the next five years. This will lead to an increase in its equivalent annual palm oil production from 60,000 tonnes to around 400,000 tonnes. It is currently cultivating new plantations in Bangka Island, off Sumatra, and East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The group is investing about US$250 million on its plantation business in Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Prior to 2005, the group’s Indonesian operations had been managed by another company. However, as part of its plans to expand its plantations business in Indonesia, M.P. Evans decided to manage its plantation business in Indonesia itself and set up its headquarters in Jakarta, operating under its subsidiary, P.T. Evans Indonesia. This presented a challenge to the group as it had to set up its management operations from scratch, says Colin Wilby, Group Finance and Systems Director of P.T. Evans Indonesia. The group started with its new plantation operations in Bangka Island where Wilby helped set up its administrative system and standard operating procedures. The previous management company had been using a generic accounting system, ACCPAC, for the group’s estates on the island. Wilby embarked on a search for an integrated plantation management system which could handle not only accounting and finance but also plantation operations, agronomics, stores, weighbridges and palm oil mills. "I wanted an application that was integrated, which could be used both at the plantations and the headquarters. I was looking for a solution which was developed specially for the plantation sector rather than a generic software," he adds. After an extensive search, Wilby shortlisted three solutions from Malaysian-based companies – Boustead Group, Golden Hope Plantations, and independent software vendor and Microsoft Certified Partner LintraMax (M) Sdn Bhd. He says solutions from the first two were actually in-house applications initially developed for their own plantations. However, Wilby found that these solutions were not integrated and did not have the full-suite of functionalities which M.P. Evans was looking for. Solution M.P. Evans subsequently decided to select LintraMax’s plantation management solution, LintraMax Plantation Director. The solution helps plantation companies improve production cost management, increase productivity and enhance operational efficiency through automation of end-to-end estate operational processes including payroll and check-roll management, inventory management, vehicle management, nursery management, planting program, agronomics, budgeting and financial management. "LintraMax Plantation Director was developed specially for the plantation sector and fully integrates plantation operations with the financial modules," says Wilby. LintraMax was engaged by M.P. Evans to implement the solution, in phases, in Bangka Island, Jakarta and East Kalimantan. Implementation work at its estates in Bangka Island started in early 2006 and took close to a year to be completed. "We had to start from scratch in terms of developing standard operating procedures and define what we wanted from a workflow point of view," says Wilby, adding the deployment of the LintraMax Plantation Director solution itself took three to four months. The LintraMax Plantation Director system implemented covers the complete estate operations including general ledger, general worker and staff payroll, harvester check-roll, contractors, procurement, inventory management, vehicle management, nursery management, planting program, production and expenditure budgeting. Developed on the Microsoft Visual Studio development platform, the system runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows Vista clients. Following the successful deployment in Bangka Island, the group moved to implement the system in East Kalimantan, which took just three months. LintraMax took a couple of months to implement the financial module of LintraMax Plantation Director for P.T. Evans Indonesia’s head office in Jakarta. Wilby says that LintraMax played a key role in the successful implementation of the new system for M.P. Evans’ plantation business in Indonesia. He adds that LintraMax, along with Enterprysis an Indonesian based consultancy company, helped the group set up its standard operating procedures, and they "exceeded my expectations" in providing quality service in deploying and maintaining the system. Asked why the company decided to build LintraMax Plantation Director on the Microsoft .NET platform, LintraMax director Khor Kheng Khoon said: "The Microsoft Windows and SQL Server platform provides the system reliability and scalability that is crucial to our clients. Moreover, the long- term cost of ownership and return on investment (ROI) on the system is great." "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is an integrated Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) solution that enables LintraMax to develop better software that meets customer’s business needs and requirements through enhanced collaboration and communication between business analysts, designers, developers, testers and business stakeholders." "The development environments enable LintraMax to focus more on solving client's business challenges instead of non-value adding technical details," affirms Khor. Benefits Speeds up preparation of financial statements Wilby acknowledges that with LintraMax's plantation management solution, M.P. Evans is able to enhance its plantation operations and financial management efficiency by eliminating manual processes at both plantation and regional office levels. "The preparation of monthly accounts at the regional plantation operation is greatly simplified and the account preparation lead time is reduced significantly," he says. As it is fully integrated, LintraMax Plantation Director allows the group to consolidate financial reporting from far-flung plantations and subsidiaries, where communications are from ideal, and generate consolidated financial reports seamlessly and quickly, he adds. "The trial balances from our various estates is easily and quickly consolidated, speeding up the financial reporting process," says Wilby, stating that it currently takes about seven working days for the group's financial accounts to be finalized compared to about three weeks for the typical Indonesian plantation company. "This is considered fast and we plan to eventually cut this to five days," he says, explaining much of the processing time was taken up not to the software but work processes and distances between the estates and offices where data are input. The ability to speed up its financial reporting is especially crucial for M.P. Evans given its status as a public-listed company in the UK, as publishing accurate and timely financial reports is an important regulatory requirement. Flexible reporting LintraMax Plantation Director provides M.P. Evans with in-depth and flexible reporting capabilities and in the process provides the group with greater insight into all aspects of its plantation operations. "It can be as comprehensive as you want it to be as it is tailored to your needs," says Wilby, adding that specific reports could easily be customized. Over 120 reports can be exported to various formats such as Microsoft Excel and Adobe Reader (pdf). It also has the capability to publish data and reports on the Web, something which the group hopes to leverage on in the future, says Wilby. By delivering quick access to decision-making information, LintraMax Plantation Director helps the group manage its plantations more effectively by facilitating better resources utilization to streamline costs and increase profits. "Every aspect of our plantations' operation activities and costing information is readily available can be reported easily," he says. In addition, the plantation management system helps to automate many work processes in the group's estates. For example, it monitors the utilization and maintenance of machineries, and tracks running costs by individual or category. Tightens internal controls Plantation companies like M.P. Evans are always watchful of the huge cost of running vast swaths of estates where wastages, fraud and thefts can take a chunk off a company's bottom line. The LintraMax Plantation Director system provides for an internal control system which enables the group to reduce inefficiency and wastages as well as incidences of fraud and thefts. "This system is unique because it was written for both (estate) operations staff as well as accountants, and provides greater insight into our plantation operations," says Wilby, adding the system can show if individual estates are running efficiently. "For example, it can provide an alert if the amount of fertilizers used per hectare is out of the accepted range. This may indicate that too much fertilizer is being used or that the fertilizers are being stolen," he explains. Wilby says the LintraMax Plantation Director system facilitates internal cost controls as it is able to capture inconsistencies in data very quickly. "If the LintraMax Plantation Director system helps us save even 1% of our operating costs annually, it will easily pay for the system many times over," he adds. Reliable, user-friendly platform Wilby is also pleased that the LintraMax Plantation Director solution is based on the robust and user-friendly Microsoft .NET platform. For example, he says the solution runs on Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 database which is highly robust and widely-used. "There are a lot of Microsoft resources available to support the database, and we are not totally dependent on the vendor," he explains. And the fact that LintraMax Plantation Director was built on the Microsoft platform means that the group can leverage on continuous upgrades and improvements made by Microsoft to its solutions. "The Microsoft .NET platform has proven to be highly reliable, and we have had no complaints since we started using it." "The system can also be maintained remotely. LintraMax support staff are able to remotely check and maintain our system from their Malaysia office," he explains. Another benefit of the Microsoft platform was that its user-friendly interface made it very easy for its staff to learn to use the system. "In LintraMax Plantation Director, we got a system which we wanted, which fits perfectly with our business needs. It's a world-class system and we are very pleased with our decision to deploy it in our Indonesian operations," concludes Wilby. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ About LintraMax LintraMax was established in 2001 as a provider of specialized software solutions and professional services for the plantation vertical industry. LintraMax suite of products is built to enhance Estate and Palm Oil Mill operation by combining industry best practices with the software functionalities of LintraMax solutions. The result of this technology enablement is the availability of information for management to manage the estate and palm oil mill operations; safeguarding assets via the strengthening of operational controls; streamlining report generation process and enhancing the decision-making process. The strength of LintraMax lies in its people – dynamic, highly skilled and results-driven. The continuous effort to attract and retained the best minds in the industry is evident in its growth rate and acceptance by leading players in the industry. LintraMax’s clients include some of the most established plantation companies in Malaysia, Indonesia and Central America. LintraMax is a MSC Status Company and Microsoft Certified Partner with ISV Software Solutions Competency. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is the world's most popular development environment for designing, developing, and testing next-generation Windows®-based solutions and Web applications and services. By improving the development experience for Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 2005 helps organizations deliver a variety of solutions more productively than ever before. Visual Studio Team System expands the product line with new software tools that enable greater communication and collaboration throughout the development life cycle. With Visual Studio 2005, businesses can deliver modern service-oriented solutions more efficiently. For more information about Visual Studio 2005, go to: msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio | Overview Country or Region: Indonesia Industry: Plantations  Customer Profile M.P. Evans Group PLC is listed on the AIM exchange in London and the group's assets consist of oil-palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, and beef-cattle interests in Australia. Business Situation The group wanted to deploy an integrated plantation management system for its Indonesian plantations and headquarters to handle not only finance but also plantation operations. Solution M.P. Evans implemented the Microsoft .NET-based LintraMax Plantation Director, a plantation management system developed by Malaysia-based Microsoft Certified Partner LintraMax (M) Sdn Bhd. Benefits
Colin Wilby, Group Finance and Systems Director, P.T. Evans Indonesia 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: www.microsoft.com/malaysia For more information about LintraMax (M) Sdn Bhd products and services, call +603 7957 7585 or visit the website at: www.lintramax.com For other case studies in this series, visit www.microsoft.com/malaysia/casestudies |