How Tecman Solved Its Manufacturing Challenges With SAP Business One: Case Study

Client: UK Based Client

Introduction

We always talk about how ERPs can adapt to the processes of any company. But how true is that? There are businesses out there whose processes won’t match with those adopted by the majority of other businesses worldwide.

They just can’t change the way they work in order to be in sync with how ERPs work. It should be the other way around. Can ERPs adapt to the processes of a business? Most can’t, but ERPs from companies like SAP can. In this case study, we will see how Tecman – a premier manufacturer of adhesive tapes, insulation material, and acoustic management solutions tweaked SAP Business One to make it work exactly the way it wanted to

Overview of the Company

Tecman is a UK-based company that manufactures industrial-grade adhesive tapes, surface protection material, thermal management solutions, noise reduction foams and more. For more than 25 years, Tecman has been serving companies across industries to enhance the functionality and safety offered by their products. Tecman products are in use in industries like aerospace, automotive, construction etc. Furthermore, the organisation’s presence can be seen in the healthcare industry as well. It manufactures face masks, cap visors and other individual protective gear

The Challenge

As mentioned, the products made by Tecman are adhesive tapes, surface protection material, insulation material and the like. The finished products are cut or slit into various lengths and widths. What this means is that the finished goods could not be benchmarked in terms of one or two specific shapes and sizes. This is why, although the company had visibility of the total square metres of products available with them, they could not see how many of a particular product having a specific size were available to them

This lack of visibility disabled Tecman from giving customers quality services. The employees working at Tecman had to memorise how many adhesive tapes or surface protection materials of a specific size were available to them. And memory seldom works 100% accurately. As a result, manual errors crept into the business operation of Tecman.

Many ERP companies failed to solve this specific problem of measuring inventory level based on the sizes of the products – sizes that did not conform to any fixed standard.

The Solution

Silver Touch Technologies immediately recognised that what Tecman wanted could not be provided by any small business ERP software. While other expensive ERP software can be tweaked using custom code, Tecman did not want to get into the complexity of custom coding their ERP.

Silver Touch Technologies realised that what the company needed was a flexible ERP whose functionality could be expanded using custom add-ons. And the best ERP software for small businesses that supports a host of add-ons is SAP Business One.

The ERP vendor recommended Tecman to implement SAP Business One along with an add-on named Business One Utility Package by Boyum. The SAP Business One ERP powered by Boyum offered Tecman not one but two benefits

• It offered the company the ability to manage inventory levels based on the sizes of individual products.
• The add-on provided by Boyum – SAP Business One Utility Package – enabled Tecman to tweak their B1 ERP without the need for custom code.

Before Vs After

The implementation of SAP Business, One with the Utility Package, significantly changed the way Tecman operated its business. The company became more proactive – as opposed to reactive – when it came to inventory management and fulfilling customer orders. Here are the things that changed

Before

• The company struggled to stay aware of the stock of a specific product having a specific size in its inventory.
• The company had no bandwidth to tweak its ERP with custom code.
• With no automated data validation measures, there was a lack of standardisation, and there were quality issues that impacted the operational efficiency.
• Various departments in the company did not have a single source of business information. Hence not all departments had access to updated or correct data.

After

• The company now has visibility on the stock of products in terms of their sizes
• Since SAP Business One and the Utility Package provided by Boyum provided Tecman with a no-code solution to shape the ERP as per its exact needs, the company can now flexibly tweak the ERP system.
• Now that data validation has been automated, almost zero errors creep into the business process in Tecman.
• SAP Business One provides a single window for all the departments from where they can access information that remains always updated.

Why Did Tecman Choose Silver Touch Technologies

Providing services that solve the unique challenges a company faces is the highest level of customer service. Instead of providing generic solutions to the specific inventory-related problems faced by Tecman would have been useless for the company. This is why when Silver Touch Technologies proposed a creative solution to Tecman’s problems, it impressed the company.

Furthermore, instead of jumping right into the implementation part, Silver Touch Technologies built a Proof of Concept using the solutions proposed. When the PoC worked as intended, Tecman decided to proceed with the implementation. Before the implementation of SAP Business One, the previous ERP used by Tecman provided little to no automation in terms of data updation and data validation. The solution offered by Silver Touch Technologies promised a greater level of automation.

Lastly, the fact that Silver Touch Technologies were able to provide a no-code solution (thanks to Boyum) that enabled Tecman to tweak their SAP Business One ERP independently without the need for programmers made the company happy.

Happily Ever After…

It is always the best practice to implement an ERP that requires as little third-party integration as possible. However, when the requirement is unique, the standard features of SAP Business One can fall short. Yet it is the only ERP for small businesses that work well. This is where third-party add-ons come in. They extend the functionalities of SAP Business One so that it becomes a super ERP! And it did become a super ERP for Tecman. Powered by the Utility Package, SAP Business One gracefully addressed all the problems that Tecman faced. The people at Tecman specifically liked the Universal Functionalities, Validation and Item Placement tools provided by Boyum’s Utility Package. Since SAP Business One can be scaled up as Tecman grows, the decision-makers can now sleep peacefully, knowing that their business process is in good hands.