By Andy Alexander and Matthew Gawn

Understanding and managing business processes are critical in being able to grow. As a company grows these processes become more complex and data becomes difficult to manage. The usual practice for a growing company is to employ more staff to manage this complexity. An investment in software can avoid the need to employ more staff and provides a competitive advantage.

SAP Business Management Software has been powering the world’s most successful companies for over 35 years. It powers of 26% of the worlds companies from small privately owned and managed companies to multi-national operations, authorities and governments within the public sector.

The Hinkcroft Group we one such company who were looking for an integrated software solution. After much searching they decided on SAP Business One WR1, which was installed at all their sites including Recycled in Orsett (RiO), an aggregates recycling company.

Andy Alexander (Director) comments “This has increased efficiencies in our operations no end, due to using one solution, all operations and financial data are linked, so we have drastically reduced the time it takes to carry out lengthy administrative tasks and subsequently, we have been able to redeploy staff to other under-resourced areas of the group.”

The operation includes the recycling of different aggregates on or off site, receipting materials into stock, keeping track of materials in different locations, processing, sorting and separating different materials. Managing operations effectively ensuring that the recovered waste stream is of a standard and continuous quality, saleable for reuse.

All of these aspects of an aggregate recycling operation warrant skills in a number of logistics and reverse logistics, process manufacturing, warehouse and supply chain management that isn’t prevalent in other industries.

Now consider the rest of the “back office” administration that is undertaken to achieve invoicing, the management of finances, accounting and consolidation. There is also another degree of complexity in this industry vertical, irrespective of the waste stream being managed, the stringent legislation and reporting that is required by governmental organisations on recycling rates, materials recovered and reused.

There is a fundamental similarity between the different departments - they all use corresponding data for each task before the job is complete. This includes the customer site, the supplier address and the type of material recovered.

However, rarely is the data used in such a way that it is entered once into one software solution. A practice of re-entering data for each stage of the process is commonplace, thus rekeying information and therefore, duplicating staff effort.

This is a result of using “point-to-point” solutions - separate accounting, operations, purchasing/sales and reporting software applications. A good indicator of how integrated your software application is - if any part of your business processes requires further data capture by the use of spreadsheets.
It is exactly this situation that SAP Business One WR1 customer The Hinkcroft Group had before they moved to an integrated application. 

Operational data was held in spreadsheets for each different company, requiring constant updating, manual input and manual reporting. Weighbridge data was manually input into a job spreadsheet. Subsequently, all this manually captured data was then fed into a finance system - manually. It is no surprise that this data was sometimes incorrect. Not only was it lengthy to administer but also after an invoice had been raised there were often subsequent questions for accounts payable and receivable.

Andy Alexander Director of the Hinkcroft Group comments “By managing operations effectively has given the confidence for The Hinkcroft Group and RiO to approach larger clients that require their recycling services. “We can set up customer accounts quickly and know that all that information will be readily available to all aspects of the business that require it. What’s more, we feel good about ourselves and that comes across when we visit prospective customers. We service their requirements profitably and can offer an enhanced service with a great deal of information our competitors cannot.”

The solution comes packaged with SAP Crystal Reports, so taking data from the system and providing tailored invoicing, carbon footprint, product ratio recycling and diversion statistics to name a few reports, are automatically completed. “Compliance reporting is produced automatically through the system and printed, emailed or uploaded automatically when required,” explains Andy. 

“Because this is an integrated application it manages routes, drivers and vehicles. Tracks recycling rates, consolidates back office, financial activities and reporting. But I think most of all, it is such an enhanced customer experience; this gives us an advantage we can use over our competitors.”

SAP continues to lead the market, with it’s small to midsize solution SAP Business One, highly qualified and certified partner solutions such as WR1, SAP is changing the way smaller companies operate, allowing efficiencies that only used to be available to larger multi-national corporations. Benefiting smaller companies by automating business processes, saving labour, administration, time and money.

For more information: www.sap.com/uk/partners/referral/index
For the Hinkcroft Success Story: http://blog.isbglobal.com/files/LR_Hinkcroft2.pdf