Business decisions based on fast reports, with accurate and reliable information at Elan Trio

About the company
Elan Trio started its activity in 1993 with a warehouse for wholesale and in a few years, it reoriented itself towards the opening of the first self-service food - Szuper Market. In 2016, the first shopping center in Odorhei was opened, called Merkúr, which marked the beginning of a sustained growth in the food retail sector. Currently, Elan Trio owns 13 Merkúr supermarkets in Harghita, Covasna and Mureș. With a turnover of over 45 million euros and over 450 employees, it is an important retailer in the Transylvania area.

The situation
With the expansion of the business through the Merkúr supermarket chain, the company's activity reached the level where the implementation of a platform for the management of the entire retail activity, together with the financial banking and reporting, was absolutely necessary. This happened in 2013, when the company started the process of selecting an ERP solution.

Elan Trio already had the experience of using business software solutions, even using a Business Intelligence application, but being independent it was not possible to trace workflows. 

The implementation of a scalable solution was considered, which would support a large number of stores and which could be configured to the specific needs of the company. Charisma ERP, together with the Retail module and the Business Intelligence solution - Charisma Analyzer, provided the necessary confidence, being a top product implemented by large retailers.
 
"It also mattered that TotalSoft was (and is) a reliable company, which is not based on an individual, but on a team that ensures a continuity of services at the expected level", Simon István, IT Director Elan Trio.




The solution
The project started with the implementation of Charisma ERP (financial, accounting, purchases, stocks, sales, fixed assets) and Charisma Retail solutions. These solutions have been developed over time with new features and services such as: integration with the online sales website (e-commerce), Inventory Tool for managing the activity of reception, delivery and inventory in the store, reporting solution, SQL database audit services to improve application performance, reporting solutions, complex automatically managed offers, implementation of customer-level loyalty cards (discounts on each purchase, weekly discounts on recurring offers, etc.) and constant support when opening new stores.

Charisma Retail has been customized to the specifics of the FMGC industry, allowing offline work to prevent sales in stores due to inventory or internet connection issues. Therefore, each store operates on its own database which will regularly be replicated at the center for centralized reporting.

Charisma Retail manages all retail activities, including integration with specific equipment: electronic scale, POS, fiscal printer. All this makes possible the quick reporting to ANAF, respectively the extraction of the electronic journal in the form of XML directly from the Back-Office. Finally, operational risks are reduced by the way in which the necessary supply is managed to avoid “out-of-stock” situations.

The results
“Immediate reporting of various financial and operational statements to management helped us in the decision-making process. In this area we had deficiencies that affected the company's results. And that is because in FMCG, decisions must be made very quickly and based on accurate, reliable information ", Simon István, IT Director Elan Trio.

The adoption rate was not very good, given the company's history and low turnover rate. The staff had difficulty giving up the daily routine acquired over the years, but this was overcome with the opening of new stores and the growth of the team.

7 years after GoLive, the system is still being developed to automate the processes in which the cost / time is high and to provide more ergonomics in operations.