Industry: Automobile Dealer
Technologies used: Borland Delphi 6, MS-Access, Foxpro, MAPI
Implemented by: Newtok Technologies Private Limited


Background

Indus Motor is one of the biggest Maruti dealer in Kerala. It has more than 15 branches all over the state. The management of inventory is a big task for such a firm to maintain a stable availability of item to every branches to satisfy the customers. Manual scheduling of ordering system is too cumbersome to handle and also to maintain a good result in future. They currently using one software from their parent company (MUL), but it is not providing a good solution to satisfy the needs of the Indus requirements in time to time manner.

Newtok Technology has provided a solution: application based purchase ordering system. In this sytem the branch and warehouse people no longer need to manually take the requirements and send it a centralized location for processing before sending the order to MUL. Instead our software will take care of the ratio between issues and available stock in the branch and warehouse to generate an optimum order to MUL. This system directly connected to existing software database and grab data from it, process it and send the final reaquirements to MUL directly as a single mail. So we reduced the load on both the employees and management on inventory matters.


The Challenge

The biggest challenge was to ensure robustness, availability and scalability. Since the application data would only be relevant for a few weeks, we have to ensure that the data taken for processing is correct and must contain minimum errors. Also the existing data format is too old and require more processing steps and we have to retieve the data from, in most case, old Novel server. This leeds the whole process into a big bottleneck.

The other challenge was some complex calculations and concept behind the whole process. We divided the whole process into small pices and statred from scratch.


The Solution

Newtok technologies built a robust, integrated solution that allowed employees to login, generate orders, make modificatin to generated orders, take hard copy of output for every possible actions with few mouse clicks. Branch people can upload the generated orders to warehouse, either by normal mail directly from the software or by mnual copy process of a single file.

In warehosue, the store in-charge will collect all generated order form different branches by downloading from their corporate mail system, upload the data to software, integrate all branches information to generate the final order to MUL. They could also change any aspect of the generated order from the same screen with an easy manner, save it, retieve it for further processing until it has to be send to MUL. We also provide many reports for easy handling of stock to branches and dead stock managenent to this software. This will insist a full control on all operation of store in near future.

Architecture

The solution uses ADO technology, and was written in Borland Delphi 6.

The solution was tested using, different branch and warehouse data directly taken from each location spread all over the state, and was found to support most of the user needs for all branches and warehosues. The application used a direct connection to the existing database system using two DSN for connctivity, and ADO connectivity for local database operation. The collected data will be processed on the client machine to generate the required order file. Then it is send to warehosue using MAPI.

Warehosue people will collect the data from mail and integrate it to generate the final order to MUL. Here we used ADO for local database operation. MAPI for mail manipulation. All reports are using Quickreport format to generate fast and reliable reporting system. Basic user level authentication is provided for whole software and some important operation are validated with the password, before processing the information as a matter of double checking. The local databse is procted with password for unwanted data manipulation.

An extensive setup program is provied with the system for easy setting up of the software in any branch or warehouse.

Operating System: Windows
Development Team Size: 3


Results

Overall the system was implemented in a record time. The solution delivered is user friendly and users are comfortable. They have appreciated the functionalities provided. The system is also integrated with other modules, processes and systems of the organisation through out their network. The tasks and responsibilities of employees are managed in a better way today in the organisation. The organisation is already seeing the changes in the efficiency in the work force and is sure that this system would play an important role in improving the overall performance of the organisation.