Arsis Trading has chosen Charisma due to its references
There is no comparison to be made with the previous situation, Charisma is a much better solution and we are convinced that at the end of the project we will have exactly what we wanted, in fact the results of this implementation can already be seen.
Company
Arsis Trading, the owner of the store chain with the same name, is currently the biggest Vodafone distributor in Romania with over 100 locations on a national level. The company has finished the year 2010 with a turnover figure of 27 million Euro with the help of over 500 employees.
Situation
Until the purchase of the integrated information system Charisma Enterprise, at the end of 2007, the company tracked its activity without using a special information system. There was an attempt at some point to migrate to a special information system, but it was not an ERP. It proved to be weak and incapable of sustaining the increasing activity of the company.
“Before the implementation there was a lot of "manual" work to be done, because the centralized integration of information and the issuing of sales reports for each office were difficult to obtain. They were hard to obtain and required time and human capital to do them." says Liviu Mirea, Trading Director Arsis Trading.
The decision to purchase an ERP system was made on one hand because the business had reached a development level that could not be controlled and, on the other hand because Arsis wanted its development plan to be sustained by a stable system that can offer real-time information for the decision-making process.
"We realized that with the company's size and growth rate, it was impossible to manage without an ERP system. We didn't do a research for the solutions existing on the market, but we preferred from the start Charisma because we knew it is a solution that complies with the activity of a retail company and we were also aware of the references.” said Mr. Radu Mirea, main shareholder at Arsis.
Solution
TotalSoft has proposed a complex solution created of modules necessary to manage the activity in a unitary way: the financial and accounting modules, purchasing, stocks, sales, retail, but also of business intelligence application, reporting for mobile phones or SMS alerts that would ensure the company's competitive advantage.
TotalSoft has started the implementation after an analysis of the Arsis business model and of the aspects that had to be improved. A technical specification was created, after which a specific system for the company was configured.
"The difficult part was that we had planned an ambitious project, the implementation in 60 stores simultaneously, estimating a period of two weeks to do it. Our company together with TotalSoft have assigned a team of specialists and managed to start the entire network in just 6 days." confesses Mr. Liviu Mirea about this accomplishment that left a good impression on him.
Now Arsis has an overall picture of the operational activity, reports on real stocks and the activity of stores can be controlled from the main office. Data processing is fast and the company can make forecasts based on the information offered by Charisma. Also, the data from the stores is sent to the main office in real time and the company has all-time access to various reports in Charisma.
"To give an example, before implementing Charisma, if we asked for a report at 14.00 I receive it at 17.00, now I receive it at 14.02 and the information is much clearer and reliable”, says Mr. Liviu Mirea.
It should be mentioned that in this case, as in most implementations in the retail area, the option was made to install the solution at the main office and the communication to occur through a VPN network that connects all stores and allows transaction replications at short time intervals. This technical solution was preferred as we had in mind the fact that if a server goes down or the connection fails or there is simply no power, the activity of stores should not be interrupted at all. In case Arsis decides to have an online communication with the stores, TotalSoft has a technical solution to offer and can make the change.
Results
Analyzing the benefits even in this stage of the implementation, Mr. Alin Serban, General Manager has told us "There is no comparison to be made with the previous situation, Charisma is a much better solution and we are convinced that at the end of the project we will have exactly what we wanted, in fact the results of this implementation can already be seen.”
Case study revised in 2008.