Challenge
CIC Holdings PLC is one of Sri Lanka’s leading conglomerates with ventures in businesses ranging from agriculture to chemicals and from medicine to household products. Guided by strong ethics and a culture of growth, CIC has become a household name with which every Sri Lankan is familiar. CIC’s strength locally has enabled the company to reach a growing international market.
CIC is one of the largest SAP Users in Sri Lanka, having had implemented SAP S/4 HANA in 2014 where the core modules of SAP were implemented with the inclusion of specialized industry specific modules highly customized for certain industries were also implemented.
However, it was then internally realized that the incumbent SAP implementation partner had overlooked key aspects within various areas within the initial implementation. Multiple Business Mapping issues were present where best practiceprocesses were not mapped to their system. User Awareness within the organization was not addressed as well as other issues such as the business architecture within the system was outdated.
Solution
POTENZA engaged in a “SAP Stabilization” Engagement where a list of more than 100+ key issues were identified and to be rectified. These 100+ issues were of various significance and diverse in nature as it included multiple business divisions across 5 different industries. In essence the project was almost a reimplementation of SAP which was done within a 6 months’ time span.
- Facilitate complex business modeling combining farmer management, crop scarcity & production, food security and output management, using robust planning tools and dashboards provided by our implementation.
- Create a major shift in project management, addressing the biological and commercial dimensions of crop production, providing high visibility for users across all key functional areas.
- Since CIC works with many stakeholders both locally and globally, our solution was designed to help manage support service engagements and value engineering activities that interfaced with a high number of IT systems.
- Overhaul the strategic planning and business continuity planning functions, through rich data points and deep drilldowns afforded by our SAP implementation.
- Our proposition is to provide a revamped SAP ERP platform that allowed for strong control over the many functional areas of the business. This was backed up by our business consultants who helped educate users to better leverage the breadth of functions provided by the new system
The Bank Reconciliation process previously required a full working day by the insurance company. With the bot, the company was able to reduce it to just two hours, freeing up resources for other tasks as well company being able to revert to the bank on the same day regarding payments that needed clarification and added information. This same day reporting ensures the company’s systems are updated on a near real-time basis. Automating the task allows the insurance company to onboard other payment partners at zero costs with regarding to bandwidth to process the payments. This allows the company to grow its payment channels and offer a better service to its customers
Uptick on Key Business Metrics
The business had seen strong improvements across all its key functions, from planning, procurement, stocking and distribution, reducing wastage and improving its turnaround times.
Better Business Resiliency
CIC operates in a highly volatile environment, with changes in both economic and natural climates affecting its business output. With the added visibility and data-drill-down facilities provided by the ERP system, CIC was able to buffer itself against changes and protect the business and more importantly, its food supply chain.
Improve Livelihoods
As a business that works very closely with rural farmers, the improvement in CIC’s business processes created a better safety net for the farmers it works with. It avoided losses in transporting goods, and was able to give better guidance on crop-selection, crop-monitoring and land usage to the farmers
