Due to a split from its German partner, Palital - producer of animal feed additives - had to switch ERP packages in a short time. SAP Business One with Procesforce turned out to be the ideal system for this company. Administrator Merijn Zwagemaker explains.

''Palital produces "green" additives to animal feeds. Additives that replace the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed and additives as substitutes for soy, which dampens its cultivation.

Palital's products contribute to improved food safety and provide benefits to nature. The company also supplies fragrances and flavors for animal nutrition. Healthy (animal) nutrition is becoming increasingly important and as a result Palital is active in some fast-growing markets around the world.

When I joined Palital, my first and most important task was to map out the processes that all run in our company. That was a big task right away, because I had to master everything in a short period of time. A lot happens at our company and many processes are complex.

Compare

Once I was sure everything was mapped out, we started looking for a new ERP system. After comparing several systems, SAP Business One came out on top with Logres as the implementation partner.

What stood out at the demo is that Logres was able to assess our business very well and also offer solutions for digitizing complex processes in our company. The click was there right away!

The total implementation of SAP Business One and Processforce took only seven months. A record, you might say. But you can only achieve something like this if you know very well what you want and also what you don't want. We kept tightly to the agreed scope and did not let ourselves be seduced by the many possibilities of the package.

Challenges

During the implementation process, we ran into several challenges. One example was setting up the function for tracking liquids in a tank.

You have to imagine that content A does not go all the way up and then content B is poured in. The two will naturally mix and then you get content C. Something like that is not standard in SAP Business One and so we had to implement a separate solution for this. What was the best solution required quite a bit of thinking. Fortunately, we eventually found a good solution and it now works fine for us.

Another challenge was that during the implementation process we found out that we wanted our operators to work with SAP Business One as well. For this we added an additional module: the PDC module from Computec.

We had to work extra hard to get it all done on time, but in retrospect I'm glad we went ahead with it. This module now saves us a lot of time: every kilo that rolls out of our production process is now in our system two minutes later.

That was different before. The operator then literally wrote a bill that was put into Excel once a week and added to the central German ERP system once a month by our operations manager. Crazy that this way of working was normal only a year and a half ago! You can't imagine it now...!

Wiser

Since implementing SAP Business One, we have become a lot wiser as a company. For us, the biggest gain is in the real-time overview of processes. We can plan, purchase and produce more accurately. There is a more even distribution of administrative work.

Additional advantage or disadvantage - just how you see it - is that we are now less flexible and work in a more standardized way.

We have been using the system for a year and a half now. All the requirements we kept out of scope during the implementation process are now slowly coming back into focus.

So we are developing hard with Logres: among other things, we want to get better custom reports out of the system, and soon we will also be looking at what we can do around planning with SAP Business One.

Thinking in solutions

Logres is a good implementation partner. If you are looking for a party with broad expertise, they are the place to be. They know something about all processes. Sometimes specific knowledge is lacking, but Logres has the connections and the partners to be able to react. For example, I am very happy with the hosting party they recommended.

What I also appreciate about Logres is the accessibility and decisiveness of the support desk. At Logres they think in solutions and with this positive attitude it is good to work together.

And sometimes when I'm not happy with a solution or approach we work it out together - including financially.