Microsoft and Al Futtaim Technologies help Elcome keep customers afloat

Al Futtaim Technologies has deployed the solution; to provide Elcome with better management of its service engineers, better communications with partners and customers and more efficient management of its business.

The Microsoft Great Plains solution will help Dubai-based Elcome, which sells and services navigation and communications equipment for ships, to manage a wide range of activities as the company expands its operations in the Gulf region. The company has offices across the Middle East, Africa and India, and the new application will optimize their strategic business processes across these geographies, as well as manage its Dhs 20 million inventory.

"Many companies in the maritime industry are slow to change, but we knew we had to have greater efficiency in our business to enable us to manage our growth," said Jimmy K. Grewal, IT & Security Manager, Elcome International. "We started looking at our financial data, but then realized we could integrate many more parts of our operations than that, to give us greater transparency of processes, greater control and much better ability to meet our customers' needs."

The project includes the first complete roll out of Great Plains Field Services in the region, a module of Great Plains designed specifically to manage engineers and other staff that work away from the company's offices. Elcome's engineers, often have to undertake repair work while ships are still at sea. This creates a need not just for a powerful human resources planning solution to manage the engineering team, but also a need for a highly mobile solution too.

"When something goes wrong with a ship's communication or navigation systems, the ship can be delayed if the problem isn't fixed, so we fly engineers out to meet the vessel, and they need to know what spare parts are required, when they will be available and so on. It is very important that we are able to meet the window to get things fixed; providing our engineer and the customer with the right information is essential in getting the task done properly and on time - our success is based on service," Grewal said.

The deployment is also unique as Elcome is hosting the Great Plains application with service provider ASP Gulf, and making the application available to branch offices through Citrix and the web, via Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Business Portal. The company decided to outsource hosting of the application so that it did not have to worry about investing in infrastructure for its various offices, and so that it would have the flexibility to move to Dubai's proposed Maritime City, which should be completed in two years time.

Venkat Raghavan- Divisional Manager of Al Futtaim Technologies said: "By deploying Great Plains over Citrix and the web, we were able to provide Elcome with a highly flexible solution that will fit with the needs of its mobile workforce. This solution also allows Elcome to better manage the cost of expansion at the desktop level, as staff can access the application with just a thin client device, instead of a full PC. When you add the highly integrated functionality of Great Plains, you end up with a solution that is not only quick and cost effective to deploy, but also provides a very high degree of functionality for end users."

"The Great Plains solution will allow Elcome to significantly cut the amount of time it takes to respond to its customers, which is essential in a business such as maritime communications, where lives could be at risk if work is not carried out promptly," said Joe Devassy, SMS&P manager, Microsoft Corporation.

"There is also plenty of functionality in Great Plains for Elcome to expand the solution into new applications, such as integration with customer and supplier systems to provide quicker and better management of relationships, and the capability to access the solution via handheld devices such as Pocket PC or smart phones, an important consideration for field service engineers," Devassy added.