Despite a slowdown in growth, consumer durables companies such as Philips, Godrej & Boyce and Samsung will spend as much as 5 per cent of their turnover on information technology (IT) adoption this year as the companies believe this will increase production and efficiency levels by anywhere between 10-50 per cent.
Philips Electronics, for instance, is in the process of implementing an SAP Global Template world-wide as an initiative to bring in disruptive innovation to support all-round growth. The Philips India operations will be live on the new SAP template after April 2009.
“We plan to cover all the basic processes and boost business intelligence, customer relationship management, advance planning and optimisation to support customers. We foresee a 2-10 per cent improvement in all these areas, including production and efficiency improvement,” said Sanjeev Kumar, director, information management centre, South Asia, Philips Electronics India.
Philips is also in the process of evaluating implementation of unified communications. Kumar added that the warehouse management system will be implemented by 2009. The company will also try other options like active and passive radio frequency identification (RFID).
The company has recently implemented a software-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy that has improved efficiency and reduced the time period from 15 days to two hours for big project orders approvals like special price. The company also implemented Wi-Fi network in all its offices and factories.
Godrej & Boyce is planning to unveil advanced supply chain suite with demand management and inventory optimisation tools. The company plans to implement the facility to trade partners also, said Kamal Nandi, vice-president, marketing, Godrej & Boyce.
The supply chain management suite gains more relevance in the context of the retail boom, modern trade formats and obsolescence. These tools will help install greater process discipline and broaden the vision for demand and inventory management. The suites promise better trade promotion management through return on investment (ROI) evaluation, said Nandi.
Godrej Appliances is planning to supply laptop to its employees in the sales department to ensure real time data availability. While bar coding is in place, Godrej is in the process of evaluating RFID for its products. Advanced SCM suite is one of the key initiatives planned by the company. It has implemented an online sales tracking system at more than 18,000 consumer touch points across the country to monitor sales.