- 3 maaliskuun 2021
- Category: Uutiset
KOMTERM was founded by Milan Jelínek in 1990 with two employees. 10 years later and the company now has 180 employees and operates 150 heat-producing sources, which it mainly automates and converts from coal to gas. Since 2000, KOMTERM has also been operating in Slovakia, and in 2005 it purchased the first major energy sector in the TATRA complex, which it has gradually modernized and continues to operate to this day. In 2016, Milan Jelínek handed over the company’s shares to his son Jan, and the family company now continues in the hands of the second generation of the Jelínek family. Today, KOMTERM with 300 employees and 450 operated heat sources is one of the largest family-run companies in the Czech Republic dealing within the energy sector. As the company grew, so did the requirements for corporate governance and the need for business automation. This was one of the key reasons which led to KOMTERM implementing and modernising its business processes by using the IFS Applications ERP system in 2017.
INFORMATION SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Komterm had long been using the Oracle EBS system, which was supported until 2017. Therefore, the company’s management began to consider other options. It was possible to upgrade the existing solution to a new version, but this did not offer any major innovations or changes which would improve operational performance. Therefore, the acquisition of a new corporate information system, which would offer the possibility of use in more companies of the Komterm so-called multi-company was put in motion.
This new system also had to have the possibility of connecting to a specialized system for the energy sector eSADA. This led to KOMTERM selecting and implementing the ERP system IFS Applications 9. This was selected from a wide range of available solutions on the market.
“We evaluated very positively both the price of the system and the friendly user interface and user configuration options,” adds Ing. Petr Burian, Head of the Controlling and IS Department at KOMTERM.
IMPLEMENTATION
The implementation was launched in November 2017. Due to the complexity of the annual billing that Komterm processes for its customers, there was a three month period where InfoConsuting had to design a framework solution to adapt to this billing process. Summer of 2018 saw the framework solution specified and specifications were created for connection with eSADA, for energy extension, as well as specifications for various document variants of printouts for customers (advance invoices, tax documents, billing invoices). During the autumn of 2018, the solution was tested in a pre-production environment. The tests were conducted by key users with the assistance of consultants from InfoConsulting. During December, data migration and end-user training were successfully completed.
“We always try to analyze and estimate the workload as accurately as possible. However, for such a specific tool, eSADA, both parties did not sufficiently take into account the variability and complexity of the integration. This subsequently led to an increase in software modifications and testing of data transfer between IFS and eSADA in the first months of live operation. However, we managed to follow the go-live project according to plan.” adds Ing. Pavel Štancl, Project Manager from InfoConsulting Czech.
BENEFITS OF IMPLEMENTATION
“After the initial go-live period, the benefits of the newly deployed system began to show. End users began to perceive significant time savings and process automation. KOMTERM employees who have been working with IFS Applications praised the modern look and user-friendly interface of the application. A great time benefit to their work is also the simplification of steps to which they were not used to from the previous system. I see the most significant benefit was the simplification of inter-company invoicing, which has significantly saved my colleagues time which they can now spend on core business. We appreciate the experience and approach of our implementation partner InfoConsulting, who helped us implement a world-class tool for our needs.” concludes Ing. Petr Burian.
PLANNED DEVELOPMENT
KOMTERM is constantly striving to increase the satisfaction of its customers which goes hand in hand with the continued development of the implemented solution. The plan is to design improvements to printouts so that customers can easily understand their billing and manage their energy consumption, as well as a more detailed breakdown of consumption of the consumption point in a given period. There will also be an extension of the functionality developed especially for the energy sector, which automates the processing of large amounts of data – the so-called energy extension, mainly in terms of processing advance payments, overpayments, bank matching and document automation.
Benefits of the solution:
- Centralized management of code lists
- Support for the establishment of new companies within the KOMTERM Group. Easy establishment or division of companies managed within IFS Applications is ensured.
- Automation of internal company documents between individual companies – so-called multisite.
- Administrator configuration of the system in the hands of the customer IT team and super users.
- IFS Lobby is used for process management – a native tool for creating and administering application dashboards, which allows users to provide an up-to-date set of information, based on which it is then easy to decide on performing specific actions in the system.
- make quick business-critical decisions.