Asian Paints is India's largest paint company, and it ranks among the top ten decorative coatings companies in the world. It operates in 22 countries and has 29 paint manufacturing facilities in the world, serving consumers in over 65 countries. Asian Paints expanded its business around the globe, in some cases acquiring companies. In ten markets it operates through its subsidiary, Berger International Limited; in Egypt through SCIB Chemical SAE; in the South Pacific as Apco Coatings; and in Fiji and Samoa as Taubmans.

Each one of these subsidiaries initially had its own IT infrastructure, maintenance of which was a big issue for the corporate IT team. Each subsidiary using different systems and solutions led to issues such as high IT administrative costs and duplicated efforts in reporting. According to Aashish Kshetry, systems development manager, Asian Paints, there was a critical need to standardize operations in the international market.

With this objective in mind, Asian Paints decided to standardize on one platform, Microsoft Business Solutions Navision 3.7, now part of Microsoft Dynamics, for its operations in 22 countries outside of India. The parent company in India runs a well-organized, efficient, and structured organization, with an integrated supply chain management solution from i2 Technologies, and an ERP solution from SAP in place. However, the general consensus was that the subsidiaries were not mature enough to use the SAP solution effectively, and that the cost of acquisition and deployment of the SAP solution throughout the enterprise would not be justified.

Consequently, Navision was selected over a six-month evaluation period to create a stable transaction system across all subsidiaries, that would last at least 7-10 years. Attention was also given to implement a solution that had built-in international modules on taxation and multilingual support, as the subsidiaries spanned geographies. "Navision had international modules for 40 countries, and it supported languages such as Chinese, Thai, and Arabic among others," elaborates Kshetry. Additionally, it offered a hub-and-spoke model which was ideal for Asian Paints; while the parent hub was running on SAP, the subsidiaries (spokes) ran on Navision.

Asian Paints roped in All e Technologies, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to help with the implementation process. Each country's implementation was on a separate Microsoft Navision installation on its own server. Once the initial installation was completed according to requirements, the company set an aggressive plan of implementing Microsoft Business Solutions Navision in ten countries, in just eight months.

The SAP-Navision hub-and-spoke model has enabled Asian Paints subsidiaries to interact with the parent organization easily and effectively, removing the need for generating multiple reports. With a worldwide edition of Microsoft Navision that supports multiple languages and the tax and legal structures of various countries, Asian Paints did not have to implement local solutions to support local taxation and legal requirements. "Our key objective-to standardize technology platforms and business processes across subsidiaries and regions-has been fulfilled," evinces a satisfied Kshetry.

The subsidiaries are now all on a single platform using the same applications and processes. This uniformity greatly reduces the IT intervention that was required earlier in a heterogeneous environment. The consolidated financial statements from the subsidiaries can now be transferred from different accounting structures into the standard requirements of the parent organization. To top it all, with each subsidiary on the same technology platform, the same business processes are being followed globally. This removes redundancies and improves business processes that have benefited all.

Rajneesh De
rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in

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