OFCDesk ushered Marelli to higher levels of efficiency by modernizing processes and integrating a network of dealers spread across the country. As a consequence, operations management improved through an exclusive and standardized information system. This consolidated the relationship between collaborators, dealers, and the company, since the entire chain of events that form a company’s real asset – from proposals and projects to effective sales and satisfied clients – rendered more visible financial results and time seizure.
Marelli seized the benefits of OFCDesk’s IDC and a SFA system fully customized on the GSX platform to boost process efficiency through the standardization and integration of their dealers’ network, thus improving from project creation to their clients’ satisfaction.
Marelli is the fastest growing office furniture manufacturer in Brazil. It has a strategically located manufacturing plant in the South.
With a monthly demand as complex as generating several purchase orders, from different dealers and stores using independent software solutions with no standards, Marelli was facing a major problem in communication traffic and in tracking processes. As costs vary frequently, the company was wasting time and resources, dealing with burdensome activities to readjust procedures and customer rules each time a minor change took place.
Marelli invested in a focused effort to develop a standardized sales system throughout the grid of dealers, in order to make total CRM and intranet applications become more efficient in all processes from customer order, manufacturing, and tracking – with consistent standards. At the same time they wanted to offer architects intelligent work tools to increase effectiveness and organize information, so they could gain from their thriving potential as a leading furniture manufacturer.
Building communication roads
All dealers need quick responses and appropriate tools to speed up the two-way route between the factory and the clients’ quotations process. Marelli knew it. This need resulted in the idea of paving fast track-only express ways to integrate traffic through a common ground of equal systems and interfaces, thus providing smooth commutes to dealers, clients and admin staff.
Marelli evolves with investments in technology and high-end machinery to produce complete work environments and specialized services as of 1983. Counting on a constructed industrial area of more than 10 thousand square meters, they are capable of keeping up with world trends and think ahead, adapting concepts to please their clients’ peculiarities and the architecture professionals’ expectations.
OFCDesk’s mission was to implement overall standardized procedures and further integrate an extensive grid of dealers and stores across the country through a simple but robust system. To control a bewildering lump of information, with thousands of pages, rules, and commissions, and at the same time increase sales and profit, Marelli modernized their project and administrative departments with OFCDesk IDC and a customized SFA based on the GSX platform for record time creation and distribution of documents and methodologies, saving time and costs.
Raising dust on the road
Marelli chose OFCDesk for its ability of fully understanding their business and thus to provide a suitable technological solution. The decisive factor was OFCDesk’s methodological approach during the implementation phase, and in offering permanent maintenance through direct channels to guarantee quicker response in troubleshooting via a dedicated Forum, e-mail and phone possibilities. The forum was an unparalleled collaboration tool, since it provided swift answers and integrated Marelli’s staff, allowing them to create a priceless knowledge database of their own, for constant reference and to act as an interpersonal networking link inside the company.
A major emphasis was placed in the project regarding future maintenance and flexibility, without the obligation of rehiring the interference of outsiders. More than being able to fix and update, the goal of the project was to allow Marelli to independently insert new data, products, and part numbers into the highly configurable, user-friendly, standardized database. OFCDesk knew it was able to deliver this solution, since there is no such a thing elsewhere in the market.
Switching to steady growth
Frequently, finance departments face challenges when readjusting prices on a system distributed throughout the country with no visual identity or standards. Each time a description change is necessary, software suppliers thrive on stressed employees working on overdue deadlines. From the company’s point of view, it is a major problem, since it takes a huge amount of time to wait for assistance, while rummaging through the jumble of documents and handling soaring costs in the commercial and the project areas.
The utmost step in modernizing the corporate structure is creating standards for the integration between the system and the entire chain of relationships of a company. Standards are essential simply for existing. It is only after having standards and procedures that it is possible to analyze flaws and opportunities, and then plan improvements in processes and the overall corporate structure.
After OFCDesk implemented special means to setting better definitions and guidance, Marelli’s stores and dealers began using well established standards to develop company budgets, client quotations, purchase orders and projects time and costs control, counting on organized and unified systems, spreadsheets, and most importantly, the same software systems for the entire network revolving around Marelli, generating a stronger team spirit, along with the feeling that everything was working more accordingly to what they wanted. In the end, they were all selling the same product and taking care of the same clients.
Having up to 80% in sales coming from small clients with thousands of moderate-sized sales proposals, Marelli can now give them the attention they deserve, with just the same quality a big spender would receive, since they know how incredibly important to the structure of the company all sizes clients are.
Ticking the (un)expected away
The implantation phase is complicated, critical at times. The early stages of the software implantation are not perfect. It presents flaws, most of times coming from other software’s flaws, or from inadequate maintenance. The integration with the database is also critical and complex; besides training, which needs to be held and then replicated to and by all the people involved, all the little components must whiz with perfection, like clockwork.
The result of this implantation phase was a meticulously refined system, capable of deactivating the former system with different spreadsheets designed by different people, and interlink all the information in the company into an accurately organized database, ticking side-by-side with the ERP system, joining all the manufacturing and order tracking resources at a central clock tower square.
Follow up
After the initial project, Marelli has migrated to a supplemental phase: expanding the system regarded as manifold with positive aspects. Who would have guessed that solving problems in less than two hours report would impress someone that much? After consolidating the results, and counting on statistical data, Marelli augmented the number of licensed copies, from 5 to 42, and are now investing in the GSX system throughout their offices, dealers and stores.
The company can grow more every day, boosting their profit margin from a system that revolutionized the way the company relates to dealers, stores and with their clients, who now count on more effective services and products. The project and sales areas now intervene independently to help solve quotidian issue, since all processes are currently standardized. The company’s reputation also improved, including the perception from their competitors.
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