Microsoft DynamicsCustomer Solution Case Study

Dynamics ERP in 20 International Subsidiaries to Integrate

Businesses Globally and Advance Process Localization

OverviewCountry or Region: KoreaIndustry: ManufacturingCustomer ProfileBecker Korea, headquartered in Germany, is a subsidiary of a global vacuum and pneumatic system distributor ㆍ manufacturer established in 1885. Business Situation Global Standardization of Financial

Data ProcessingSolution ERP Upgrade for Global Business

Integration and Acceleration of Localization

Benefits Global Standardization of Financial

Data Processing One week to one day Financial Report

Preparation time Established transparent customer

technical support system Visible business status at a glance Real-time inventory analysis and

purchase order processing Increased sales management system

efficiency with partners

“The Head Quarter planned a global ERP roll-out in two stages: first, ERP deployment and system stabilization and, second, ERP system optimization for each subsidiary and establishing ERP system so that HQ can directly access each subsidiary reports."

SeonHee Hwang, Director of Becker Korea

Becker Korea adopted ERP for the first time in 2007 as part of the global ERP expansion project undertaken by its Head Office. Prior to the decision to introduce ERP, the Becker Head Office used SAP and other offices used various financial and accounting solutions suitable for their respective local work requirements. Becker Korea was no different. When its Head Office provided the ERP operation guidelines, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4.0 was adopted in 2007. Having achieved work standardization as directed by Head Office, Becker Korea upgraded its system to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 in 2012. This upgrade was in line with Head Office directives. The management team is especially excited about the new user environment. Because of their need to view a much wider range of information than most other employees, managers had to click through several menus to dig for the required information in version 4.0.It is not just the management team that welcomes Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. Employees at the sites all agree that the work process has become much easier.

SituationBecker Korea is an industrial vacuum pumps,

blowers, and compressors distributor manufacturer, with customers from various industries: semi-conductor equipment, printer, and medical equipment manufacturing. Becker Korea adopted ERP for the first time in 2007 as part of the global ERP expansion project undertaken by its Head Office.With 127 years of company history, Becker

GmbH (Head Office) decided to implement an ERP system across all of its offices in over 20 countries around the world to overcome perhaps the greatest struggle for all global companies—processing financial data. The Director of Becker Korea, SeonHee Hwang, said, "it used to take us a long time to prepare consolidated financial statements and other reports which had to be sent to Head Office, because our accounting and business procedures and standards were different from those of Head Office." She added, "It usually took us about a week as everything was done manually. I believe that it was more or less the same for other Becker offices."When Becker was planning to introduce ERP

company-wide for speedier and more transparent processing of global financial data, restructuring of business accounting was an important concern, especially considering the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the International Standards on Auditing (ISA). At that time, Becker wanted to establish a standard financial and reporting method for its offices in 20 countries around the world while keeping its Head Office-centered financial data processing system. Finally, implementation of ERP was the answer it settled on.Prior to the decision to introduce ERP, the

Becker Head Office used SAP and other offices used various financial and accounting solutions suitable for their respective local

work requirements. Becker Korea was no different. When its Head Office provided the ERP operation guidelines, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 4.0 was adopted in 2007. Regarding the introduction of Microsoft’s

solution at that time, Hwang said, "With the expansion of the domestic sales network, we were actually considering using a Korean ERP solution, when we were advised by Head Office to use Microsoft Dynamics NAV as our global standard ERP." She added, "Our Head Office spent nearly a year looking for the best solution and they finally decided on Microsoft Dynamics NAV because of its excellent inter-connection with SAP and scalability, which was important for a large global organization with offices in over 20 countries." The Microsoft Dynamics NAV global package features versatile deployment which makes it easy to implement in small- and medium-sized businesses around the world without too much hard work. It is also available in more than 42 editions for different countries.

SolutionThe implementation of ERP changed

practically everything carried out at Becker Korea. The first obvious change was the reduced time for consolidating financial data and preparing reports for Head Office. Becker Korea has submitted consolidated financial statements, sales reports, cost-dependent margin ratio by product, and other reports every month. The time spent for preparing them was reduced from one week to just one day. Previously, employees had to work their way through the financial and accounting programs and various sales and inventory records to extract numbers and manually process and verify them. Now, with the ERP solution, data collection, processing, and verification have become much easier and simpler.

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One good example of time reduction is cost calculation, which was necessary for preparing consolidated financial statements and margin ratio reports by product. Hwang said, "Our Head Office wanted a global analysis of costs by product from each office, excluding import-related costs such as insurance and freight. So Becker Korea had to calculate the cost of each product using our financial and accounting programs and then manually subtract the import-related costs in order to prepare the reports." She added, "With the introduction of the ERP solution, we can now produce automatic reports of actual product costs excluding the import-related costs. This has saved us a lot of work."

Having achieved work standardization as directed by Head Office, Becker Korea upgraded its system to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 in 2012. This upgrade was in line with Head Office directives. Hwang said, "Head Office planned the global roll-out of ERP in two stages." She continued, "The first stage was the introduction and stabilization of ERP. The second was optimization of ERP for the work environment of each office while, at the same time, changing the system so that reports are not prepared and sent, but instead Head Office accesses the ERP system at each office on a set date and fetches the necessary data." In other words, the main focus of the

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 upgrade was to improve the work efficiency in Becker offices around the world through localization, while increasing the density of global business integration. To live up to Head Office's expectations, Becker Korea was extremely careful in the selection of its partner for the upgrade work. This was necessary not only to comply with the direction of Head Office but also to identify points of business process

innovation at office level so that the role of ERP could be expanded. Becker Korea chose BSE Consulting, a certified Microsoft Korea partner.BSE Consulting adopted new modules and

performed customization as the Dynamics NAV 4.0 was upgraded to version 2009. First to be introduced was the service management module of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. This means that service management was added to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV environment to complement the existing modules for finance, sales, purchase, etc. Lifecycle management after delivery is crucial for vacuum systems such as industrial vacuum pumps, blowers, and compressors. The customer services department of Becker Korea had relied on manual records for the management of warranty periods and repair history. With the introduction of the service management module, Becker Korea can now use the system for consistent after-sales management of all products. Adoption of the service management

module not only improves customer satisfaction but also helps internal business transparency for customer support. Hwang said, "With the introduction of the service module, our technical support work is now included in the ERP system instead of depending on manual recording as we have done before. This means that service management records have become transparent between Head Office and our office. This is important because it provides highly objective data for determining whether servicing is provided for free or at a charge, or whether servicing should be carried out at the expense of Head Office or our office."

Benefits

Business Status at a Glance

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In terms of customization, the windows of the ERP system needed to be modified to suit the preference of Korean users. Improved usability was achieved as the accounting and balancing windows were designed to look similar to those of the Korean financial and accounting programs which had been in use for a long time. There is another significant advantage that Becker Korea is enjoying in terms of the program window design. Role Center is a customized homepage where employees can get an overview of various information tailored to their work. The management team is especially excited

about the new user environment. Because of their need to view a much wider range of information than most other employees, managers had to click through several menus to dig for the required information in version 4.0. All of this additional clicking is completely eliminated in version 2009. There is yet another advantage the management team really appreciates: seamless integration between Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Excel. Hwang said, "Having upgraded to Microsoft

Dynamics NAV 2009, we can get an overview of our management status, such as sales volume, by looking through each accounting category in the first window." She added, "I also like it that we can turn all kinds of reports into Excel format and that creating charts for trend analysis has become easier."

Real-time Inventory Analysis and Purchase Order ProcessingIt is not just the management team that

welcomes Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. Employees at the sites all agree that the work process has become much easier. One area of great improvement is mobility. For the sales representatives who are frequently on the move, improved mobility is almost like giving

them wings. A great level of mobility guaranteed by version 4.0 was using laptops and smartphones to view and get various data. Version 2009 now also supports off-site data entry. Being a multi-national company, it is often

necessary for Becker Korea's employees to work early in the morning at home to communicate with people at Head Office. Becker Korea also has a large sales force. With these organizational characteristics, improved mobility is expected to contribute directly and indirectly to increased sales for Becker Korea. Hwang said, "Since we are quite far away from our Head Office geographically, it is crucial that we maintain an adequate level of inventories here. Sales representatives would even compete against each other for the low inventories we have. With this ERP upgrade, however, we can analyze the inventory in real-time and submit purchase and order requests. This translates into higher user satisfaction."

Increased Sales Management Efficiency with PartnersHaving upgraded the ERP system for all

offices around the world to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, Becker plans to gradually expand the local office-Head Office system integration. This means that Head Office and local offices would no longer have to prepare and submit data each time it's requested, but they would instead be able to access each other’s systems and view data at any time. To do this, Becker Korea plans to make it possible for Head Office to directly view the data on its ERP using VPN. Hwang said, "Far removed from the one-way

reporting we have done so far, there will be less work involved in reporting as colleagues in our Head Office will be able to view our management data on sales, inventory, etc. any time they need to. We will no longer have to

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request information from Head Office by email and the staff there will be able to access our system to view the production schedule and other data at any time. The one-way reporting system will turn into a two-way interactive environment."

Microsoft DynamicsFor more information about the Microsoft Dynamics CRM, go to:www.microsoft.com/dynamics/

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Becker Korea’s products and services, call 82-31-815-2400 or visit the website at: www.beckerkorea.co.kr

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2012

Software and Services − Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009