With a dynamic environment in which accuracy and speed are crucial to success, a Sydney fruit and vegetable supplier has chosen Cincom to handle its business software requirements. With the Priority enterprise resource planning solution in place, T&F All States is equipped to rapidly process its orders with a high degree of automation, getting its deliveries right every time.

As a diverse fruit and vegetable supplier servicing the greater Sydney region and regional centres throughout New South Wales, T&F All States supplies fresh and prepared fruits and vegetables via a pack-to-order process directly to the hospitality establishment, major government organisations and Health Services, Food manufacturers, shipping businesses (both passenger and commercial), airlines and schools

Situation and solution
T & F chose the Priority ERP solution and the Cincom Environ event-enabled integration solution to improve its complex business process and help with its strategic growth plans, explains T & F All States’ Business and Administration Manager, Arthur Zinopoulos. “We use pack-to-order when processing fruits and vegetables. Products are purchased from the markets and processed, packaged and shipped within a time frame of 24 hours or less.”

According to Zinopoulos, “During our initial meeting, Cincom took the time to understand our business needs. That’s one of the reasons we selected them. Our needs were intricate, and today, our partnership with Cincom is valued greatly.”

Given the perishable nature of the goods it handles, time is of the essence: anything sitting on a shelf can go from valuable to the tip in a matter of hours or days. That’s why T&F wasn’t prepared to compromise on the software powering the company. And it has to do with data; just like produce orders, the data must be accurate and on time to enable fast, fresh deliveries, every time.

“Our underlying business process has improved with Priority due to the categorisation of products into many levels. This gives us transparency and better reporting capabilities,” confirms Zinopoulos.

He adds that Priority’s reporting capability gives the company’s operative the ability to access information at any stage of the ‘farm to customer’ process. “For example, we can accept orders as late as 5:00 a.m. through 1:00 a.m. the next day, and have that order dispatched on time as requested by their customer the very next day.”

Result: Operational excellence
Zinopoulos says Cincom’s software has made a valuable contribution to operational efficiency. “The impact this has had on our customers is that we are now able to absolutely guarantee a quick turnaround. We have the flexibility to adapt to changes in customers’ requests and flexibility in lead times; for example, a customer may request an earlier delivery, and we can adapt rapidly to this request, process the order and deliver the order on time, guaranteeing a satisfied customer.”

“With Priority, we can adapt rapidly to customers’ requests, process the orders and deliver on time, guaranteeing a satisfied customer.”
Arthur Zinopoulos, Business and Administration Manager

As a fast-moving commodity, the margins on fruit and vegetables is notoriously thin. That’s why one of the greatest benefits T&F All States has gained is a reduction in its overheads since implementing Priority. That, along with never missing an order, is crucial to the company’s ongoing success.

Equipped with the ability to react to events by looking at and analysing customer buying buyer behaviour, it is even able to anticipate and better understand orders. For example, when an anonymous fax arrived late at night requesting shipment the next day (the customer’s employee failed to include details), T&F, using Priority, was able to analyse the order, compare against previous similar ones to successfully identify the customer, process the order and have it shipped to Canberra, arriving the very next morning.

Zinopoulos says Cincom software plays an indispensable role in T&F’s business. “The knowledge and technical skills of Cincom’s staff continue to indicate that we had made a good choice. We have always found Cincom willing to assist us. We have requested some complex modifications over the years, and the Cincom team is 100 percent behind us, supporting us in our journey with Priority”.

Faced with an ageing ERP solution which was putting its compliance with applicable regulations at risk, Thales Underwater Systems turned to Cincom for an improved system. Thanks to the implementation of Cincom CONTROL, it has benefited from security enhancement by taking the system in-house, the elimination of siloed information in disparate business systems and made information and analysis readily available.

Thales Underwater Systems (TUS) was created in 1996 with the merging of Thomson Sintra Pacific and the sonar activities of GEC-Marconi. With a turnover of more than AUD$110 million, the Sydney-based engineering and manufacturing company employs more than 500 people in designing and manufacturing underwater sonar equipment for defence and civilian applications including offshore oil exploration.

Situation
TUS sought to bring its ERP in-house and sought full functionality, said Peter Quinlan, Operations Director. “The outsourced ERP wasn’t compliant and we felt improvements to that system would be excessively costly and a poor investment as the system had other limitations.”

Moreover, TUS needed to blend its back-office activities with those in the rest of the organisation. Linkage among various TUS units would give its financial staff a better picture of the organisation’s overall performance and to produce more meaningful reports.

Beyond these strategic motives, TUS wanted to reduce the cost of ownership, improve security and extend the ERP benefits.

On the financials side of the business, Management Accountant Troy Vegvari had known the difficulties in preparing reports with outdated information. Plus, “We wanted something that would enable us to continue doing our current activities, while at the same time allowing for future uses. And we wanted something that would give us an easy path to information from around the organisation.” He added that extracting information from the previous system was cumbersome and required considerable IT administration.

Solution
Cincom approached TUS at a time when, said Quinlan, the company was a highly educated, sceptical customers. “Ours is not a conventional manufacturing operation. We produce highly complex products and approach each as a mini-project. We might work on up to 100 projects, of varying scale, at any one time and these are spread between five separate business lines. To some extent, these business lines operate as sub-businesses, with their own personnel, resources and budgets.”

TUS identified four main reasons to change the ERP system and bring it in-house:

• A more cost-effective solution that ended its dependence on an outside service
• Security enhancement by taking the system in-house
• An end to information islands in disparate business systems
• More accessible and timely analysis of information

Rapid implementation was imperative; strategically, the company sought increased capability to support new initiatives and continuous improvement of its business processes.

Engineering change control was another concern.

“Our customers expect us to improve our products continuously,” explained Quinlan. “We must get maximum performance out of high-tech products and that can mean frequent change, often on a large scale.”

The new ERP system had to be flexible enough to support the culture of change that arises from constantly looking for ways to improve products. This meant coping with unusually deep bills of materials and with complex tracking of serial numbers of the numerous components within products – two capabilities offered by Cincom CONTROL.

Finally, “We do a monthly close, with our reports output by the fourth working day, with the next two days for management reports,” said Vegvari. “Previously most of this time would be spent compiling the reports.”

Giving the Cincom representatives one hour to acquit themselves, Quinlan was impressed by the company’s obvious understanding of his business needs and its experience in handling complicated aerospace and defence industry operations.

“I gave Cincom an hour of hell at that meeting, but they demonstrated real knowledge of this type of business,” said Quinlan. “They made it clear their product would work for us.”

Business Systems Manager Malcolm Boadle coordinated thee design and technical implementation. For him, key to a functional and widely used ERP was ownership throughout the selection and implementation process. “Our managers knew they had a vested interest in making sure the system met their requirements. They were tasked with satisfying themselves that the system would help execute their particular duties and effectively run our business.”

Vegvari said vendors assessed included SAP and Oracle. “We chose Cincom because of its price and the package of capabilities it offered, and the fact that it best suited our business requirements. It was also reassuring to know that other businesses in similar areas to us were using Cincom.”

Results
A team of Cincom and TUS personnel completed the initial installation of the ERP suite of finance, manufacturing and engineering applications in a ‘big bang’ approach, terminating the outsourcing arrangement as soon as possible. “The implementation was rapid for an operation of our size – about 8-9 months, including training,” Vegvari said. “We had a tight deadline and Cincom came to the party and met it. The Cincom people were excellent; they were quick, professional, answered our questions and were obviously well-trained.”

“We had a tight deadline and Cincom came to the party and met it. The Cincom people were excellent; they were quick, professional, answered our questions and were obviously well-trained.”

As for the results: “We have improved our decision-making and reporting capabilities. said Quinlan. “For instance, we recently had a corporate restructure. Getting the necessary in-depth reports from the service provider would have been difficult and time-consuming; the CONTROL system enabled us to access the required data without needing additional resources.”

CONTROL is a step forward, Vegvari agreed. “It’s a full ERP system, covering manufacturing, projects, purchasing, automatic ordering, as well as accounts payable, accounts receivable and general ledger. It has consistent Windows-based screens that we all feel familiar with, which has resulted in more efficient training. CONTROL: Financials is very logical. It works very well for accountants, so out financial operations are now streamlined.”

Easy access to data means the required reports are rapidly and automatically produced. “That means we can spend more time analysing the results.”

Boadle cites greatly improved interdepartmental relations as a significant benefit of implementing Cincom CONTROL, saying the selection process opened strong lines of communications that still exist between personnel in different departments.

“All up it was an exemplary result in terms of achieving our goals and value for money,” said Quinlan.

“Cincom has provided a more cost-effective solution that gives us better integration of information, increased flexibility and more streamlined financial processing. The improved access to information enhances our decision-making capabilities.”

Based in Canberra, the Mint is responsible for producing all circulating coins for Australia.

Originally established on the Canberra site with the task of manufacturing the new decimal currency coins introduced in 1966, it has since produced more than thirteen-billion circulating coins, and oversees a two million coin per day minting capacity.

The Mint also designs and makes coins, medals, medallions, seals and tokens for special occasions/purposes and for collectors in the public and private sectors, such as producing the offi cial Australian coin celebrating the wedding of Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton.

The Mint operates across three key business lines; Circulating Coin Services; Numismatic Program & Minting Services; and Gallery and Visitor Services.

Renovating more than just the building
When the Mint decided to do something about modernising their ageing building they also identified several areas to improve operational effi ciency – areas such as where the chrome-plating, gold-plating and acid treatment of coins is processed before they are turned into fi nished coins. The Mint also wanted to install a manufacturing execution system and new, automated production-line equipment, including laser-guided forklifts and conveyer delivery systems, in order to improve its capability and overall safety.

At the time, a lot of the business functions were run with Excel spreadsheets and paper-based systems were used to manage production schedules.

There seemed to be little or no relationship or coordination of information between any of the functional areas, and silos of duplicate information and re-entering of data into different systems was commonplace. As a result, a third thread of the modernisation effort was coined as the ‘IBIS’ (integrated business information systems) project. The Mint’s CEO at the time, Ms Janine Murphy, was the catalyst for the ‘Mint Modernisation Project’ covering the three major projects: the building renovation, the production-line upgrades and the IBIS project.

Stephen Delaney, the Mint’s CIO at the time, bought into the vision from the start. Recognising the need to maintain its reputation for highquality products and service, Delaney knew that delivering the vision would also mean improving the organisation’s business processes and systems.

Finding the right integrator
Selecting software solutions and vendors to partner with were of utmost importance to the Mint. Given its role and importance to government, the Mint has very rigid procurement-process guidelines. Vendors, their solutions, support processes and reference sites went through an extensive assessment for each of the functional areas, and for a technical integration thread.

The Mint analysed several packages, including several from Cincom Systems.

“At the end of the tender process,” comments Delaney, “Cincom Systems came up with the best solution with the lowest risk. Cincom’s solutions may not necessarily have had all the bells and whistles, but, as a complete package, it was the one that scored highest and the one we chose to go with.”

Integration key
The scope of the IBIS project was huge. It included Cincoms’s ERP, financials, compliance and quality management, CRM and quoting and ordering systems, as well as POS, demand planning and HR from other vendors. Integration was necessarily also given a major focus.

Government security measures added specific needs across HR such as clocking in and clocking out systems, as well as external integration with logistics providers and a number of reporting requirements for central government agencies. Bringing this all together was achieved with Cincom’s Environ Integration tool.

It didn’t stop there – a new VOIP telephony system and call centre was implemented using Cincom Synchrony, and a records-management system was also integrated.

According to Delaney, “Cincom was selected to be responsible on the project to ensure the integration between all of the components and all data coordination – not only between the Cincom pieces, but the other non-Cincom pieces as well.”

Working together
Despite the ambitious scope and integration challenges, the project was a success. Creating project teams from across business units, IT and Cincom was a major contributing factor in the success. From an organisation of 200+ employees, as many as 40 made a significant contribution to the project, including vital support from management and the executive team.

One of the exciting by-products of the project was increased understanding amongst staff of end-toend processes surrounding coin production, as well as individual roles. As a result, the Mint has found an increased willingness from staff to more actively engage and contribute to process-improvement strategies for the Mint.

“People now understand the whys of their jobs, not just the hows,” remarks Delaney. “And we have people who are looking for more. From an IT point of view, it’s like trying to hold the reigns a little bit tighter to stop them from running away too fast. So we really gave them something that they see the potential in. And that’s a nice thing. It’s nice to have to slow down the organisation instead of the reverse.”

A bright future
Post modernisation, the Royal Australian Mint has a new sheen worthy of its name, and has identified many future opportunities to leverage its investment.

You could say the team is ready to cash in on all its hard work.