Customer Success Story

ARTIC

At a Glance
Company	ARTIC
Industry	Tile Manufacturing
Employees	500
Solution	Epicor iScala

As the $20m Arabian tile company ARTIC grew year after year, it found that its core financial and business systems simply could not scale at the same pace and functionality that it needed as a fast growing company. The system under use was custom-made, but built in a Dos environment which lacked three critical things — integration, communication and efficiency.

ARTIC’s rapid growth and ageing IT infrastructure meant it was time for this Aggad Group company, with its 500 employees, to move quickly to an integrated business application. The company found that the real problem lay in the fact that its infrastructure simply could not satisfy some critical requirements, including cost calculation, that are crucial in the capital-intensive manufacturing sector.

In addition, the materials requirement planning process was weak and given the diverse geographic spread of its business units, connectivity between all manufacturing, sales and warehousing divisions was becoming essential for the progress of the company.

Therefore, a solution was needed that would facilitate better coordination between sites, help the company to stay cost-competitive in the market, and also provide timely information to decision makers. That’s when the need for a collaborative Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system took root and following in the footsteps of its sister company — Rana Confectionary (an Epicor iScala user) — ARTIC opted for a collaborative solution for that much needed productivity boost.

The move to implement an ERP system was just the beginning of the road to better efficiency and business sense. Expected to be implemented and running within the next six months, ARTIC’s Epicor iScala system will boast multi-language capability, global support, seamless connectivity and a solution that’s built especially for its manufacturing-driven business. The system integrates with Internet technology and traditional ERP functionality to make global business simple. It enables companies to fully integrate all their ERP systems throughout the Middle East region or anywhere in the world, whether in a subsidiary, division or headquarters, and extends to their partners and suppliers if required.

According to ARTIC general manager Suleiman Bashiti, the implementation plan is estimated to help ARTIC increase not only its market share and revenues but also significantly reduce operating costs. The solution is expected to deliver productivity enhancements in Manufacturing, Sales, and Inventory Management, and reduce overheads, proving to be good value for the investment.

Bashiti reiterates that Epicor Scala covered all ARTIC’s requirements and previous experience showed that they have a very good support team that delivers in a timely manner. “During negotiation, the Epicor Scala team reflected great confidence in their software and personnel, which had eventually been translated into their contract. It was also great value for the money, is built to work for a medium sized company like ours and it can be easily adapted to suit the manufacturing industry without requiring a lot of expertise to keep the system running,” he says.

ARTIC says the most attractive benefits of the iScala system were that it brought in integration, speed, functionality, efficiency and performance. “By way of using this system we will be able to obtain accurate cost figures, which we believe will help ARTIC increase its market share, revenues, and achieve cost reduction,” Bashiti says.

On the technical front, the Epicor iScala Manufacturing Process is based on the MRP II concept; making it ideal for repetitive manufacturing needs such as make-to-stock (MTS), make-to-order (MTO), assemble-to-order (ATO) or engineer-to-order (ETO). The manufacturing process supports just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing and the quality control activities that are needed to meet ISO 9000, EDI, CIM and other quality based control environments. The back end of the entire solution will be driven by a LAN with UTP CAT5, Pentium Processors with Windows 2000 and Windows 2003, SQL as the database server, and will support 22 concurrent users across various ARTIC sites.

The Epicor iScala manufacturing process is used to plan, control and execute manufacturing activities based on MRPII and work orders. Most repetitive manufacturing and re-manufacturing environments are supported, from simple assembly through to complex production lines with multiple work centers. This is accomplished by combining a number of features including bills-of-materials (BOM) with multiple assembly levels and variants and multiple costing models e.g. Standard, actual, FIFO etc. In addition to managing & controlling the manufacturing process, it can be connected to financial applications to create an integrated system, implementing a high level of functionality and flexibility — allowing for tailor-made solutions to system management.

Epicor Scala ME Regional Managing Director Ziad Aqrabawi says, “ARTIC did not take the decision to move to a truly collaborative ERP system lightly. Epicor iScala won over other players including the likes of Great Plains, Sage, Oracle, Hollol and Focus.”

ARTIC appointed a professional company (Allied Business Developers-ABD) to evaluate and choose the most suitable solution based on covering their requirements. The RFP [Request for Proposal] was prepared and sent to several major companies for the bid. Another professional company was then appointed to evaluate the bid, and decided after thorough investigations that iScala was the most proper solution. This entire selection process took one full year to reach completion.

Incidentally, this also points out the trend towards the growing uptake of ERP solutions in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, according to Aqrabawi. A report from

Gartner states that process integration and enabling technologies are expected to significantly enhance cycle times, thereby enabling an enterprise to be more responsive and nimble. Without such tight integration, enterprises will need to depend on batch transfers of data between multiple applications, putting them at a competitive disadvantage. A key differentiator for vendors will be the degree to which they can enable that integration.

Following the implementation, ARTIC will use Epicor iScala software modules in its financial, manufacturing, inventory, sales & dispatch, payroll and project management systems.