ASB-Reiting: 30.000 transactions a day with Axapta

Since the founding in 1994, ASB-Reiting has been the market leader in distribution of fast moving consumer goods in Russia. Steady growth year after year made it increasingly difficult for the company's old DOS based ERP system to cope with the large numbers of daily transactions. After carefully surveying the ERP market, ASB-Reiting contracted Columbus IT Partner to implement a new solution.

The road to the new solution, Microsoft Business Solution Axapta, was long. For about two years the management of ASB-Reiting had been looking at and evaluating various ERP systems and implementation partners. Finally the decision was made to let Columbus IT Partner be responsible for an Axapta project – a system that Columbus already had successfully implemented in several other distribution companies.

A new platform

The key issue at ASB-Reiting was to establish a new platform for finance, logistics and other essential business processes. In order to minimize the risk of down time during the implementation of the new Axapta system, it was decided to “freeze” the existing work processes in ASB-Reiting, while the new Axapta system was being implemented. The implementation period ran over 9 months and went according to plan.

A big leap

The Axapta solution represents a big leap forward for ASB-Reiting. The earlier system could only cope with approximately four months worth of transactions making it necessary to archive all data three to four times a year. The accounting department was having regular difficulty because of the large amounts of data. They needed to “un-archive” all data for the fiscal year in order to close the balance. With Axapta all these problems are now history. In addition ASB-Reiting's experts now have a full palette of integrated analytical tools in Axapta. This helps them to optimize business processes – bringing value to ASB-Reiting in a manner that was not possible with the earlier ERP system.

Full cycle

The Axapta solution now handles around 30.000 transactions daily with out any problems in performance or storage space. The basic functionality in Axapta also integrates administrative accounting and budgeting. Tasks that earlier had to be carried out by manually consolidating data and placing them in spreadsheets. Currently 60 users are working with the solution handling a full cycle of business processes from orders to purchasing and logistical operations. All transactions are automatically reflected in the accounting module, the tax module and the information is ultimately consolidated and used for management reporting.  

Training center

In 2005 work began on creating a corporate training center that will strengthen the Axapta competencies among ASB-Reiting's employees. This will increase overall performance and will help make work processes and analyzing processes more efficient. By centralizing the training the cost of training per headcount will also be reduced. The training center will assume responsibility for all Axapta training of employees plus special training programs for the heads of business processes within the company.   

A classic case

“It has been the classic case of a successful company outgrowing their IT systems”, says Alexey Vlasov, Account Manager from Columbus IT Partner in Moscow. “We are of course happy to be chosen as a partner based on our track record with similar projects with other distribution enterprises. We look forward to a long running relationship with ASB-Reiting”.