Challenge
Since its foundation in 2000, Tara Jewels has relied on SAP® to support critical business functions such as ERP and finance. However, accessing the accumulated data and producing reports quickly became difficult and time-consuming. The company wanted to introduce a more effective automated platform to make its operations more efficient.
“The jewelry business is very subjective for clients, which means we have thousands of customizations for each product line, each of which has to be tracked and invoiced accordingly,” explains Vishal Adhyapak, IT General Manager, Tara Jewels. “Using our old version of SAP, deriving data relating to sales, products, customers and geographic locations took far too long. We have around 40 stores in India and export to global retailers such as JC Penney and Walmart so we needed more dynamic information.”
One of the principal reasons that data is so valuable in this industry is the constantly fluctuating price of the precious metals used in production. This directly affects the label price of each item of jewellery and thus impacts on sales, profit and margins.
“How can our sales team, who showcase a catalog of samples, provide accurate pricing when the information is not available in real-time – especially without a proper mobility solution in place?” asks Adhyapak. “There are endless variations in diamond quality, caratage and the alloys used, all of which we wanted to monitor more closely.”
Tara Jewels approached SAP and asked how best to upgrade its platform to deliver precise real-time data as required. SAP HANA®, the next-generation ERP business-suite offered the ideal path to process integration; the next step was to find the right implementation partner.
Solution
SAP recommended multiple potential partners; however, Fujitsu’s local presence, vast SAP HANA experience and ability to provide both hardware and consultancy made it the clear choice for application delivery.
“We found that with other vendors there was a gap between hardware provision and execution, whereas Fujitsu was able to assign the right people so both aspects were taken care of,” adds Adhyapak. “The team came in and explained the deployment process beautifully and simply with an eye on longer term strategic needs. These factors combined with competitive pricing, eco-friendly servers and wraparound support to make Fujitsu the perfect fit.”
Over the course of six months, Fujitsu implemented the latest SAP HANA version including enhancement packages on two PRIMEFLEX® for SAP HANA systems. Additionally it installed 20 Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers along with two Fujitsu ETERNUS storage devices and support for the surrounding applications including Veritas backup solutions providing fast, reliable performance for over 1,000 users in 40 countries.
Benefit
Tara Jewels now enjoys a single, simple SAP HANA-enabled ERP platform that integrates and automates multiple processes across the business. This has enabled it to streamline its workforce and focus on expanding its operations.
“Previously, we had employees spending a full day manipulating spreadsheets and converting them into Excel for weekly reports. In addition, we had a team of 14 that manually entered information to create a bill of material for each new design,” continues Adhyapak. “That team now consists of three people who can create the necessary bill within seconds rather than hours.”
Now, all data is designed as business objects and automatically scheduled to export from SAP HANA with no intervention. That not only saves time but also gives the company access to vital information much more quickly. Furthermore, Fujitsu provided documentation and training at a micro level so that Tara Jewels can easily support the new solution internally. In the event of any major issues, the local Fujitsu team is on hand to resolve them rapidly.
“It is working smoothly and there have been no issues so far. Moreover, we have in-built resilience with properly configured disaster recovery capability provided by Fujitsu,” says Adhyapak. “That means more uptime, increased productivity and improved customer service.”
Tara Jewels is delighted at its ability to react more quickly to changing demand, reduce operational costs by 50 percent and ensure business continuity. The next step in its evolution is upgrading to SAP S/4HANA, which the company is already planning with Fujitsu.
“The service has been absolutely fantastic compared to other technology service providers, there is a huge difference,” concludes Adhyapak. “Fujitsu has helped automate our business and removed the manual intervention that was slowing our growth.”
