Growth with Business IntelligenceAt BA’s central warehouse in Ski, there are approximately 11,000 items in stock, as well as 25 nationwide Service Departments which provide BA service, training and local follow-up for Installation companies, Energy companies, Industry and many other com-panies. Since the mid 1990’s BA has seen a strong growth, both internally and through acquisitions. Comptroller Kim Dragland at BA states that one of the fundamental pre-requisites for growth has been the Infor M3 Business System and Merit Intelligence (MI), which have been the main tools for support of management decisions. - MI is used as a portal to our Intranet, producing customized reports within a close integration with Infor M3. We can access dynamic reports, analy-ses and other management decisions in real time, with a simple keystroke. The reliance on this information has become second nature to the working day on practically the

entire organization, said Kim Dragland. Visualization and simplicityIn the eight years since the adoption of MI, we have seen continuous adaption of the solution to new areas within our Organi-zation, which have been expanded with added reporting and tools. According to Kim Dragland, they first decided to adopt MI at the Finance and Economy department. “It breathed a new life on Financial Control and Monitoring. We later expanded it to Sales / Marketing, in order to grant a constantly updated overview of the revenue targets reached and the products sold”. We have nurtured a continuous cooperation with Merit in order to provide us with the best value out of MI; last year, MI was adopted in our logistics and warehousing. Through its browser, employees are able to access easily understandable visual displays of their areas of intervention. We particularly like the graphic visualization on the reports,

Merit er en ledende leverandør av programvare og konsulenttjenester for forretningsprosesser og implementering av forretningssystemer. Merit tilbyr sine kunder økt konkurransekraft ved hjelp av implementering og drift av moderne og integrerte standardløsninger. Merit är Infor största partner kring affärsystemet Infor M3 med cirka 250 anställda i 11 länder.Les mer på www.meritglobe.com.

Berggård Amundsen & Co:Merit Intelligence applied over the whole Organization

BA has 25 service departments spread over the country, where customers can get guidance and buy products. The image is from the service department in Moss.

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Berggård Amundsen & Co AS (BA) has seen very rapid growth in recent years and has established itself as one of Norway’s leading electrical wholesalers. «Without flexible and easy Business Intelligence tools we would surely not be in this position today», said comptroller Kim Dragland.

Berggård Amundsen & Co AS Berggård Amundsen & Co AS ( BA) is a family owned electrical wholesaler, established in 1946. BA developed the independent wholesaler group Elgros in 1975, and created the expert electri-cian chain Norgeseliten in 1997. In 2003, BA built a new central warehouse in Ski and began relying Infor M3 (of Movex) in 2005. Merit Intelligence was established as our Business Intelligence in 2007. BA is presently a nationwide wholesaler encompassing 25 service centres, and in 2014 we’ve reached a turnover of 1.380 million kroner.

Forts.

with green, yellow and red marks or bars that illustrate the timeline evolution of the targets. The reports are tailored to our business, namely via reports that use our in-house definitions for obsolescence. For BA, MI has become a data warehousing solution that has been developed and adapted step-by-step, and we consistently see better and larger profits through its use. Amongst other things, we target the reduction of stock cycles without any sacrifices on customer service. We know that we can rely on MI to provide us good decision intelligence on this matter, says BA comptroller. The Central warehouse of the futureIt’s not hard to be impressed when you visit BA’s central warehouse in Ski, south of Oslo. There you will find cables of all sizes and types in the yard, a traditional pallet warehouse with stations in eight floors, and - most impressive of all - a fully automated warehouse, managed via AutoStore, with 15 robots continuously retrieving products from 10 000 possible locations. The Auto Store was introduced in 2013, and it has undoubtedly contributed to increase efficiency on the delivery of goods and lower costs of staffing. - The competition between electrical wholesalers is tough, and we must find smarter ways to work. The automated stock selection, the upgrading to Infor M3, and the future-oriented warehouse data-management solution in MI, are all fundamen-tal pieces to achieve this target. - We differentiate ourselves from the competition by being a Norwegian-owned company who invested in local service departments, and is able to provide higher levels of service than most others. Our BA information training of customers also plays an important role in this, says Kim Dragland. Close cooperation with MeritBerggård & Amundsen has a long and positive experience of working in close cooperation with Merit. – Merit’s professional consultants are highly knowledgeable in technical solutions. They also understand how a modern data-managed warehouse functions, and are highly able in the development of integrations with Infor M3. In our case at BA, there has been extensive tailor-ing and we were always able to obtain the expected results, summarized Kim Dragland.

How can BA benefit from Merit Intelligence at an even greater extent? – Besides our warehouse workers at the central ware-house, we have already 140 out of 170 head office staff and service departments that benefit - on a daily basis - from the reports and analyses provided by MI. The level of confidence in the Reports is high and there are upcoming needs that we know we will be able to satisfy by working with Merit. It seems that, in the near future, we may have a greater need to access infor-mation from devices beyond PC, namely through tablets and smartphones. This contingency is already included in our future plans, and we know that we will doubtlessly continue to chal-lenge the technical capabilities of MI and of Merit’s consultants, concluded Kim Dragland.

BA stocks a large quantity of cables for the Industry and for Energy companies. According to Thomas Wasenius and Kim Dragland, the management of that stock is under continuous adaptive changes, and they rely on MI for efficient decisions.

The fully automated warehouse AutoStore was introduced on our central warehouse in 2013. Comptroller Kim Dragland and Opera-tions Manager Thomas Wasenius show us the 15 robots working to select and pick the products, out from 10 000 selection sites.

Employees at BA get visual displays of each of their areas of inter-vention from the browser. This visualization emphasizes reports, marked with green, yellow and red marks or bars to illustrate the timeline of target achievement.

Les mer på www.meritglobe.com.

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