NEC (Europe)

Scalable Order Entry and Inventory Management System is a Strategic Asset

Background

NEC is a leading international supplier of electronic products, primarily communications systems and computers. Founded in 1899 in Japan, NEC Corporation has subsidiaries and offices in 28 countries worldwide. NEC (Europe) is NEC's sales, marketing, and distribution arm serving the European market.

Challenge

NEC was operating in an increasingly competitive environment. To help stay ahead of its competition, NEC decided to reengineer its order processing and warehouse business processes. Both of the processes are business-critical components of their sales and distribution business. Improved efficiency and productivity would provide not only better operating margins but better customer service.

A related problem for NEC was that their business had outgrown the current capabilities of their information system. With the company's computing requirements surpassing its systems capacity, NEC looked to move to a scalable IT solution with the ability to easlily add capacity and capability as their business grew. In addition, NEC wanted newly developed applications to be easier to maintain and more adaptable to changes in the business environment than their legacy systems.

Solution

NEC used USoft Developer to develop applications for the Order Entry and Warehousing departments. The NEC development team built a USoft application which decentralized the order entry process. Now the sales department enters their own orders directly and takes ownership of the orders from their origination to final delivery. Similarly, NEC developed a system which provided immediate access to up-to-date inventory information. As a result of this USoft-developed system, the sales organization provides a higher level of service to customers and can help manage inventory levels in line with demand.

Because USoft applications are capable of being transparently deployed across heterogeneous environments, the underlying technology (e.g., hardware and software platforms, relational databases, graphical user interfaces) of NEC's system can grow and evolve as its business does. The system is also adaptable and easier to maintain than their legacy systems. To make modifications, NEC's team changes the application definitions in the dynamic repository. All changes are inherited to all related objects within USoft's object architecture.

Benefits

With regards to order processing, Eamonn Townsend, Development Manager at NEC, explains that NEC has, "halved order processing time and improved our level of service to customers." Warehouse management has also become more efficient. For example, improved information on product turnover has reduced stock levels in NEC's warehouses by 60 percent, saving millions of pounds.

USoft Developer's ability to easily and quickly apply changes or fixes to the application are cited by NEC as having been critical to the success of their implementation. This ability has enabled NEC to achieve a 30 per cent productivity gain over traditional build methods, and to apply changes and enhancements to its running applications five times faster than would have been possible had its applications been developed with more traditional tools.

Eamonn Townsend explains the benefits of USoft's Server/Client approach, "The USoft tools really force you to focus on the business requirements, rather than the technical aspects of the application. By getting the business rules right, we get the system right. Our users now have far more respect for the MIS department because we are talking in terms they understand."

Conclusion

USoft Developer gave NEC-Europe the unique ability to create scalable, adaptable order entry and inventory management systems that streamlined operations and improved customer service. As a result, NEC's information system has become a strategic business asset in helping NEC thrive in a competitive market.

USoft: The Server/Client Software Company

To investigate a partnership with USoft for developing and implementing server/client solutions, call toll-free at 1-800-For-USoft, or call one of our offices.
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