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| Case Study |
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First-ever SAP implementation in the Indian reclaimed rubber industry |
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| Always a trendsetter for its industry peers, Gujarat Reclaim raised the value bar
by teaming up with Patni, to be the first ever company in the reclaimed rubber
industry to have implemented SAP |
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Gujarat Reclaim & Rubber Products Ltd is in the business of reclaiming rubber from scrap. Through
steady growth and a strong vision, the company has emerged as the largest manufacturer of
reclaimed rubber in India, and one of the top five globally. Driven by the management vision of
driving more value for customers year after year, Gujarat Reclaim firmly believed that putting the
customer in the driver's seat made good business sense. As the company started expanding its
footprint in global markets, it realized that besides the imperatives of low cost, high quality, and
speed in decision-making, the company should have systems and processes that would earn for it,
the reputation of being a company that is innovative and 'easy-to-do-business-with'. |
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| The desire to evolve its operations inspired the company to benchmark against industry best
practices, drive operational improvements and seek process standardization across various
business functions. |
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| Integrated back-office applications for efficient service delivery |
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Gujarat Reclaim had relied on systems that were commissioned to address only the needs of a
singular function. Over the years, Gujarat Reclaim realized that a unified transaction environment
was crucial for efficient service delivery and reduced costs of operations. A suboptimal systems
landscape dotted with disjointed homegrown systems could do very little to improve the
information transparency required for speed and accuracy in decision-making.
The company determined that it needed to overhaul its existing IT systems if it wanted to
have better control of operations to manage and sustain growth. The company identified that
faster availability of information and adherence to industry benchmarked standard practices
would prove to be a competitive advantage in the highly unorganized business of the reclaimed
rubber industry. |
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| Gujarat Reclaim's objective was to have an
integrated view of all information resources i.e.
general ledger, order entry, billing systems,
inventory systems, and shop floor control and
manufacturing operations. |
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| Implementing SAP to have a process view
of business |
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With the objective of streamlining business
processes, the management concluded that an ERP
solution would prove to be useful in obtaining a
consistent, singular view of the business at any
point in time and in reconciling and removing inaccuracies in the data available with accounts, stores and
purchase departments. After a rigorous review of the available
solutions in the market, Gujarat Reclaim identified SAP as the
ERP solution as it was a full featured application and was
scalable to cope with future development needs of the company. |
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| Patni as a trusted technology advisor |
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| Gujarat Reclaim realized that successful implementation of SAP
would require the expertise of a strategic partner. It selected
Patni as the implementation partner due to its cultural
compatibility, software competency, and domain knowledge. |
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Patni conducted a detailed analysis of the various business
parameters related to production, pricing and inventory. Based
on the understanding of the business requirements and the
implementation timeframes, Patni used the standard ASAP
methodology for execution of the project. iReturns, its
proprietary tool proved useful for calculating the ROI for
different scenarios. |
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Comprehensive change management focused on people,
process,
and technology |
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With decades of experience in SAP implementation, Patni
recognized that success of ERP implementations hinged on the
active involvement of end-users. Keeping this insight in
perspective, Patni detailed a comprehensive change
management roadmap for helping the company's users embrace
change rather than resist it. The implementation team analyzed
all the issues of concern, determined the cause and took
corrective actions, wherever necessary. |
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| Senior management sets the direction |
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Senior management participation made a significant difference
in the successful implementation of ERP in Gujarat Reclaim.
They spent a good deal of time in promoting how ERP could help
deliver upon the vision of creating value for customer - year
after year. The sharing of vision
re-energized the staff and
provided them direction. The insights about different ways of
value creation spurred process innovation and catalyzed the
shift from homegrown systems to ERP. Their active involvement
at all stages of implementation lifecycle paved the
way for Gujarat Reclaim to use change as a driver for
organizational growth. |
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| Beginning of business payoffs |
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Within just eight months of operations on the new system,
Gujarat Reclaim has started seeing significant payoffs - made
possible by adapting to the best practices laid down by the
ERP system.
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| Some critical business benefits include: |
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Improved planning and accurate delivery dates for products:
With SAP, it is possible to retrieve information about the
inventory of raw materials of various grades, create recipes, and
plan the manufacturing of a variety of products. This capability
has helped the company in adhere to accurate delivery dates for
each of its end-products, and increase its planning horizon from
a couple of weeks to two months. |
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Flexible pricing for maximizing customer value:
With the
support provided by SAP, Gujarat Reclaim can offer complete
transparency in the cost structures. Today, the company is able
to control critical parameters such as packing costs, freight costs
and costs due to material rejections. With this capability, the
company is now able to offer flexible pricing to its customers - a
capability that was non-existent in the earlier system. |
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Support for local business requirements:
The SAP system has
simplified the complexities involved in financial accounting as
per the law of the land. It provides flexibility to take into
account, statutory requirements pertaining to excise duty,
value-added tax, income tax, and sales tax. Notwithstanding
this ease of use provided by the software to accommodate local
business requirements, SAP has enabled Gujarat Reclaim to do
business with companies across the globe. |
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| What's next? |
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| Having turbocharged the smooth functioning of business on a
transactional backbone, Gujarat Reclaim is now looking at
systems that can analyze data by using technologies such as
Business Intelligence. Also, on the anvil are plans to implement
SAP's Plant Maintenance module for integration of all aspects of
plant maintenance processes with production planning. |
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| Client Testimonials |
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"Patni and Gujarat Reclaim worked
closely to successfully complete the first
ever SAP implementation in the
reclaimed rubber industry. The Patni
team demonstrated a great sense of
camaraderie which combined with their
technology expertise were factors that
helped us transition from a people driven
to a systems driven business." |
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Rajendra Gandhi
Managing Director
Gujarat Reclaim & Rubber Products Ltd. |
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"The implementation of SAP has changed our approach
towards business. It has helped us to adapt our
operations to the best practices and deliver extra
value to our customers through better inventory turns,
lean cost structures, and diversity in offerings"
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Rajendra Gandhi
Managing Director
Gujarat Reclaim & Rubber Products Ltd. |
