Microsoft Dynamics NAV - Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group
Module
Situation The Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group is a global organization that specializes in railway infrastructure support. A leader in the industry for more than 100 years, the history of the company began in 1895 when Hans Goldschmidt developed a specially refined THERMITE® powder for the seamless welding of railway tracks.
Today, represented in more than 20 locations worldwide by local production and service units, the companies of the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group serve as a strategic partner to the railway industry and are committed to providing high quality service through a wide range of materials, tools, and equipment. The products developed and sold are used to join the rails and build the continuously welded network, to maintain its performance, and to ensure its safe operation.
Although an industry leader, the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group is, nonetheless, in competition with many global suppliers. To retain its competitive edge, the international company sought an advantageous method for adjusting its cost structures quickly and efficiently in response to the competitive market forces that impact its operations.
"It is especially important to be able to react very quickly to worldwide tenders so that we can appropriately serve the customers," states Ralv Ulatowski, Managing Director at the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group. "Fast service in responding to customer wishes is becoming even more important. And that is an important criterion that lifts us apart from the competition."
To achieve greater operational agility and to better respond to customer needs and requirements, the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group realized it needed to improve its access to critical business data. A significant roadblock was that each of its subsidiaries had developed dissimilar processes utilizing a variety of ERP systems. The solution needed to be a single, consistent system for all subsidiaries. A streamlined internal process would enable the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group to conduct business in a more efficient and competitive way.
Solution The Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group considered several options to address its need for real-time access to its management data.
"The particular challenge for us lies in adjusting our price structures quickly in response to the competitive market forces that affect us. And for that, appropriate information technology is essential," Ulatowski noted.
Although the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group had several installations of SAP in use by its subsidiaries, it determined that SAP would not be the ideal choice to deploy company-wide to meet its goals. It was expensive to implement, a challenge to configure, and difficult to change. Further, it didn’t offer the range of language options that was deemed to be vital for the company’s expanding global operations.
Seeking a viable alternative, the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group worked with NAVAX, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that plans, implements, and successfully supports business software solutions. NAVAX helped the company evaluate, as well as run, a pilot project and deploy Microsoft Dynamics NAV software first in two of its subsidiaries-Austria and Brazil.
"NAVAX established the relationship with the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group through its management of the pilot project in Austria. This initial project was such a success that NAVAX became a real trusted advisor," says Andreas Hauser, Microsoft Product Manager, Microsoft Dynamics NAV. "This was very important for Goldschmidt because they wanted to have one partner they could deal with worldwide."
Upon receiving positive feedback from the Austrian subsidiary, the decision was made for Microsoft Dynamics NAV to be deployed for the Brazilian subsidiary as well. This, too, was deemed a resounding success, so NAVAX was asked to complete a worldwide plan to move IT business to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV platform in all subsidiaries.
"In working with the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group, NAVAX has proven itself not just as a local advisor in the deployment, for example, in Austria or Brazil, but also as a partner who helps us standardize our company procedures and organizational structures. And that will bring us big cost advantages," Ulatowski states.
The Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group solution utilizes a central server in its headquarters in Leipzig, Germany. It’s structured as a server farm with several databases, so each subsidiary has its own database, running on this single server. Every local version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV has an independent database in the central server in Germany, so the local support costs could be drastically reduced. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is the central database for every single application.
With all databases on one server farm, it is easier to consolidate all the data than having the databases spread out over the whole world. All of these databases can be opened from each subsidiary, so a customer can review production operations in Germany or any of the worldwide operation sites at any given time.
"Customers have a complete picture of the business worldwide, yet each subsidiary still has its own database. That makes it easier to support the whole system and easier to implement new and additional subsidiaries," Hauser says. "Running one single server for all 20 locations is the cheapest option for a worldwide operating company because it is possible to optimize the usage of the server, so utilization of the server is just perfect. Clients access this database via Citrix Terminal Server," Hauser adds.
"Complete management data of the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group needs to be accessible at all times, at every location, even remotely over the browser. That's the central mission of the Goldschmidt-Thermit project," says Oliver Krizek, CFO of NAVAX. "With Microsoft Dynamics NAV, the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group now has a software solution in all its branches. Centrally hosted on the server, it's available worldwide."
Benefits The Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group chose the Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution because it offered clear advantages in information management and accessibility.
"One big competitive advantage of Microsoft Dynamics NAV is the full integration of the production module with all its sub-modules, which can support numerous different production approaches, starting from a very project-oriented production system to a process-oriented production system," Hauser notes. "The customer can choose in every location which modules and sub-modules he’s to use and pay for."
It soon became evident that Microsoft Dynamics NAV offered additional benefits as well. The other management data options the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group considered did not offer solutions for the company’s growing number of worldwide operations and the communications problems that could eventually result. Deploying Microsoft Dynamics NAV met the company’s need to accommodate multiple languages. While current global operations for the company utilize just a handful of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV language interfaces, more than 25 language options are available.
"In our international environment with over 20 locations worldwide, we have long searched for a software solution alternative to SAP that fills the requirements for multilingualism and international applicability. Those did not exist until now," Ulatowski says.
User friendliness was another valuable benefit. In that regard, a customer need or requirement can be resolved by virtually any employee at the company.
"More and more, the customer expects just-in-time delivery with a short processing cycle. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV we have the opportunity to serve our customers in a quick, simple, and cost-effective way," Ulatowski explains.
"Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Office [Professional Edition] 2003 are closely tied together. User data from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, can easily be transferred into [Microsoft Office] Excel or [Microsoft Office] Word. No special user knowledge is necessary, just familiarity with how to copy and paste data in the Windows environment," Krizek adds.
Deployment, support, and overall cost for Microsoft Dynamics NAV were also determined to be more beneficial than other solutions the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group considered.
"For the Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group, both the deployment and operating costs of Microsoft Dynamics NAV are clearly more favorable than the previous systems, including SAP," Krizek notes. "A conventional Microsoft Dynamics NAV implementation needs only about three to six months from the idea until go-live. After the pilot for the Goldschmidt-Thermit Group, the rollout per branch was only about two months."
The Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group estimated that the time to rollout SAP would be twice as long. "Microsoft Dynamics NAV is structured with modules like SAP, but the main difference is the modules in Microsoft Dynamics NAV are smaller, and they’re really integrated in one database. And in SAP, modules are big blocks, and these blocks are communicating with an interface which doesn’t provide true integration," Hauser explains. "With the Microsoft Dynamics NAV strategy, the customer has the chance to have a taller ERP system running on a cheaper hardware platform."
Reduced service-related costs have complemented these advantages. "Not only can we centrally manage maintenance and software updates, but we also have the opportunity to look into our worldwide accounting information and achieve improved control of our company. That’s special since, in the past, we had to make inquiries through our local companies. Now we can look in for ourselves," Ulatowski notes.
With the myriad of benefits already realized, expectations are high for more "bottom line" results to support the selection of Microsoft Dynamics NAV over "ther options.
"Based on our initial experiences, we are very confident that the ROI and TCO will be a clear improvement over an SAP installation," Ulatowski states.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV - Goldschmidt-Thermit-Group
