Customer Profile

The customer was a premier diamond brand that sold its solitaire and jewellery to both individual customers and jewellary retailers. They offer their diverse clientele in India and around the world the finest and most exquisitely crafted solitaire diamonds and jewellery in the world in an organised and transparent manner. Each of their diamonds adheres to the highest standards of artisanship and stringent quality parameters, which go beyond any certifications from labs. One of the measures of transparency of their model is that they publish MRP for products based on 120+ quality criteria and these MRPs are used in the pricing of stones.

Engagement Context

The customer had implemented the community version of Openbravo ERP to support and scale their business operations. The implementation was completed over a period of two years and put into regular operation from April 2018. However that implementation had many short-comings and hence they were facing significant challenges in terms of deriving the desired utility and benefits from it. They reached out to Promantia and given the severity and variety of issues , agreed on an audit to assess the extent of issues, their root cause and the cost and approach of addressing them.

Key Challenges and the response

The customer did not have expertise on the product and was dependent on individual external contractors. Therefore there was a requirement that the audit be done discreetly without raising concern of the existing implementation maintainers. So the audit was done based on interviews of stakeholders and did not include extensive reviews with the implementation team and analysis of production environment. To mitigate the risk , a production-like environment was setup and extensive code analysis was done as part of the audit.

Another challenge in the chosen approach of setting up a production like environment was that the source code was not managed under a source control system and did not have a well defined repeatable build process. We then got access to the production version of the code and basedlined it and the technical consultants addressed all build issues and made a build plan as part of the audit preparatory activities.

Solution Highlights

Promantia had a team consisting of management consultants and product functional and technical consultants engaged in this customer audit. The management consultants focussed on understanding the overall customer business environments and the demands that it would place on the ERP currently as well as in the future and the product consultants mapped stakeholder feedback to root causes as well as reviewed the implementation choices and customizations. The causes of the issues (audit findings ) were classified against major root causes which included

• Inappropriate/Inefficient methods of implementation – that caused performance , data quality and maintenance issues
• Functional gaps – due to lack of product knowledge as well as improper business analysis
• Gaps in software engineering process – source control, issue tracking, change request management, solution testing and validation etc.
• Priority requirements not taken up – because of quality and productivity issues

The audit team also provided audit recommendations including the rationale for some recommendations ( and alternates that could also be considered ). The recommendation included a schedule and cost plan for addressing the concerns in a phased and prioritised manner and ways of addressing risks of vendor transition if that needed to be done.

The result

The final report was discussed with stakeholders including company senior executives , where Promantia consultants helped them get more value of the audit , by providing inputs for making choices and planning ahead.

Key benefits delivered and Outcomes realized

The audit helped the customer to take important business decisions in terms of product choice and next steps ( with an understanding of the costs for the same ).

The implementation of the audit recommendations ( over a 6 month period after the completion of the audit ) helped our customer in –

•  a more stable system with faster delivery of functionality
• the improved productivity of their staff in various departments
• an improvement in the accuracy and consistency of backend data and reports
• moving forward on integration with other systems ( esp. eCOmmerce ) in an efficient and transparent way