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Customer:
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Shanell Limited
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Plastic dreams drive profits at Shanell Ltd.
Born in 1989, Shanell, a company specialising in the sourcing, import, sales and
distribution of all kinds of plastic materials mainly imported from international
conglomerates, such as Exxonmobile and Marubeni, has been built over the years. It is now one
of the largest distributors of plastic in Hong Kong, importing more than 100,000 metric tons
of plastic materials annually.
The 50-strong company maintains this pole position from two sales offices and one head
office in Hong Kong, and one sales representative office in Shenzhen, China. Its success was
clearly demonstrated through its promising growth during economic downturn, financial crisis
and SARS, with a promising growth of over 20 per cent per annum for the last 3 years.
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Moulding automation
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Success left Shanell with reams of paperwork. Manual records for orders, deliveries, shipment
schedules, and shipment documents were kept in racks. The company also used five PCs for
spreadsheet and word processing needs.
Accounting was done on an antiquated DOS system manually-making the system susceptible to
human error. At the same time, business was based on relationships. With all processes
leading to a laborious paper trail, the sales team did not feel any incentive to supply the
head office with the details about the clients. This meant, although the company was reaping
profits, it had very little information as to who its most profitable customers are. It also
made Shanell rely on its senior sales staff tremendously and lost valuable customers when
some left the company.
With the profit margins getting thinner by the month, and with the market getting more
competitive, Shanell relied on sales to prop up the profit margins. However, the company knew
that to double its revenue in the shortest possible period, it had to streamline its
operations to remove its operation inefficiencies if it wants to remain competitive.
So Alan Chiu, Shanell's CEO looked for a place to start. Then he met IBM partner Ultra
Active Technology Ltd (UAT) who turned his problem into a company-wide solution.
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Starting the process
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To map out Shanell's IT environment, UAT used their 15 years experience in business
re-engineering and product development to help Mr Chiu examine his own company processes.
Using Rapid Application Development (RAD), he was able to compartmentalise each business
activity and trace out each document workflow involved.
At the same time, UAT demonstrated its FLP Enterprise Management System solution, built
ground up on IBM Lotus Domino and Lotus Notes, to Shanell's senior management. Mr Chiu
and his team quickly learnt how a company-wide IT infrastructure can help weed out
inefficiencies, while raising its bottom line.
The collaboration capabilities of Lotus Domino impressed Mr Chiu. With its easy management
features, it met his requirements for a one company-wide system that provided a flexible, yet
robust foundation to all his business processes, at a reasonable cost.
"We liked IBM Lotus Domino because it is a collaboration platform that will help us to
enhance communication and raise team spirits. With all company business information stored
centrally, they can be retrieved anytime, anywhere for quick decisions," said Mr
Chiu.
IBM Lotus Domino server software provides the FLP Management System with a robust
multi-platform foundation. Built with enterprises in mind, the messaging and collaboration
software eases document management by automating a company's entire workflow into a
secure, paperless one.
With Lotus Domino, disparate business processes, including customer relationship management,
supply chain management, help desk and project tracking, are tied together for better
manageability and security. Besides offering flexibility to a company's infrastructure,
the feature-laden Lotus Domino also eases software deployment and configuration while driving
down the total cost of ownership (TCO) through efficient utilisation of available
resources.
At the same time, UAT's experience in accounting also caught Mr Chiu's
attention-clearly reflected by the fact that the company was instrumental in computerising
the Hong Kong Society of Accountants.
By capturing all the information early in the sales processes, the FLP Enterprise Management
System also allowed Shanell to maintain its customer relationships while key personnel left
the company.
"The easy management and ease of use allowed us to concentrate on our core
business," said Mr Chiu, who chose to implement UAT's IBM-based solution within a
week.
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Injecting productivity
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Once implemented, Shanell reaped the benefits almost immediately.
On the onset, the solution, which was based on Lotus Domino version 5 allowed Shanell to
communicate prices immediately to its front line sales team. Since price fluctuation occurs
on a daily basis, the new solution allowed the company to let their front line sales team
know sell price quickly.
Prices were also more accurate as price details were only needed to be updated once and
would be reflected throughout the system. This allowed Shanell to eliminate precious man
hours wasted in correcting quotations and invoices, which plagued the company previously. At
the same time, with less human error, the operation costs were drastically reduced.
Competitiveness was also sharpened as the senior management was able to know in real-time
where their respective businesses are heading. The solution allowed them to retrieve business
status in a second, and allowed them to react to changing market condition quickly by
developing alternative business strategies or modifying existing ones.
Customer relationship, which was the key problem in the previous setup, was brought to a
whole new level. With all relevant customer data kept in one central database, the solution
allowed Shanell to preserve its relationships even if key staff left the company. It also
allowed new salespeople to get acquainted with the customers quickly. It improved time for
processing accounts, since all relevant details can be retrieved immediately when customers
enquire for it.
Credit control was tightened with features such as credit status search and sales approval
workflow. Since the system was imbued with accounting best practices right from its
inception, the accounting books were kept updated and allowed the senior management to breath
easier during company audits.
With the documents filed electronically, Shanell cut through its towering paperwork and
allowed their staff more time to do more productive tasks. Both Lotus Domino and Lotus Notes
also improved knowledge management by allowing staff to share experiences and relevant
information with colleagues in different department or with new staff.
Best of all, Mr Chiu had more time to himself. He no longer had to wait for printed reports
before realising how well his company is doing. All he had to do now is to remotely connect
through the company's virtual private network to assess his business's health online,
in real time, improving overall business visibility.
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Conclusion
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Although the new IT architecture was robust, it gave Mr Chiu and his team the much-needed
flexibility to build new revenue streams while expanding their geographical coverage.
With management information at their fingertips, Shanell is now looking to open more sales
offices in China without much effort in reining them. The company is also contemplating to
build a company-wide broadband so that new offices can start collaborating with the head
office almost instantaneously.
"FLP built on Lotus Domino improves efficiency and productivity. Furthermore, the
combination has increased our morale and team effort-factors that many companies overlook
when you are running an inefficient company," said Mr Chiu.
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