Challange

Volvo CE is the oldest industrial company in the world that is still active in the construction machinery segment. Its fragmented IT environment was the result of many mergers and acquisitions; this made global order management difficult for Volvo CE staff and dealers.

Kenneth Bergström, coordinator for Volvo CE’s Division Customer Sup-port order system, reports: “With our full product line, which is manufac-tured, serviced and supported world-wide, we must be able to act as one global company with a common order structure.”

Historically, all regional Volvo CE regions hosted their own independent order and warehouse systems, which created problems. Each time dealers wanted to place orders, they had to access several warehouses. Also when newly acquired companies were getting integrated into the enterprise structure, the process took too much time.

Solution

A joint ERP system was dismissed because an ERP implementation would have been an expensive, time-consuming and complicated process. Volvo CE’s Division Customer Support requirements were the opposite—it wanted a fast implementation with extraordinary capacity.

After investigating various vendors, Volvo CE Division Customer Support selected Syncron and its Global Order Management (GOM) solution, whose main benefit was ease of implementation: it required no changes to internal proce-dures, it operates independently of IT infrastructure and ERP support systems, and it could be implemented at a fraction of the cost of an ERP solution.

During 2004, the GOM solution was implemented at Volvo CE in Europe and shortly thereafter in North America, Singapore and Korea. “All in all, the implementation ran smooth-ly,” says Bergström. “In Singapore, we literally swapped systems from one day to another, without problems.”

One success factor was the excel-lent Volvo–Syncron teamwork. Accord-ing to Bergström, Syncron made a true effort to understand Volvo CE’s specific requirements.

Result

Volvo CE now enjoys one global process, which allows all geographically spread units to work as one company. Dealer orders are no longer tied to a specific warehouse: Syncron provided a single, integrated web interface to manage all ordering, price and availability, part in-formation, order placement and status. Syncron’s solution also enables integration with Volvo’s suppliers.

The GOM solution led to improve-ments in customer service–plus cost savings associated with more efficient order and maintenance processes, e.g. all warehouse functionality develop-ment occurs directly in the Syncron solution.

Volvo CE’s assertive growth plans cannot be fulfilled through organic growth only, so acquisitions will continue. Going for-ward, managing the entire order structure during integration of these companies becomes business critical.

“Thanks to Syncron, Volvo CE Divi-sion Customer Support now has the necessary logistic prerequisites in place to easily grow and change its or-der structure,” says Bergström. “And most important of all, the investment in Syncron secured our future growth.”

For more information about Syncron and its solutions, visit www.syncron.com.

SYNCRON CASE STUDY

One process unifies Volvo Construction Equipment“We can now change the Volvo CE environment according to our wishes – new and existing systems are effortlessly and seamlessly connected in various ways as the order process evolves.”

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