You’re probably thinking that to get all the functionality your business requires you need a dependable and proven tier one system like Microsoft or Oracle right? Yep. OK, you might want to re-think that after reading about SellAgence and its Greentree experience.

For business decision makers who dare to look beyond the big name international vendors, here is actual evidence that smaller and more importantly, local vendors are offering stable solutions that improve business agility and competitiveness without the drama and costs usually associated with large systems implementation.

Mark Emirali, IT Systems Manager at SellAgence a global brand management company was delightfully surprised to discover the competitiveness of and comparative functionality found in locally sourced business management software from Greentree. The decision to move forward with Greentree has proven to be a major coup for SellAgence on all fronts.

The business situation

Oracle was initially selected because SellAgence could not find a system capable of handling its complex multi-tiered Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) pricing requirements. Emirali is quick to point out that whilst Oracle had served the business well, with a staff of just 100 “we were no longer able to justify the resource required to support a tier one system and the on-going investment required to maintain it.” Basically, SellAgence needed to right-size IT systems and support and simplify business processes with as little disruption to the business as possible.

No-compromise on functionality

A common view among some business decision makers is that in order to get all the functionality required to run the business, a more complex and inherently larger more expensive system would be required. Emirali concurs, “I would imagine that everyone wants their business to be less complex, but there’s a fear that it’s a trade-off in terms of what the system can do but we haven’t found this to be the case at all with Greentree.” Emirali adds that “when we changed from Oracle to Greentree we didn’t expect the functionality would be as rich in the smaller system, but a lot of the key functionality was there from day one.” In this instance, Greentree goes some way to challenging the common view that in order to get the functionality required one must buy the biggest and inherently most expensive system available.

“Initially it was simply a decision about dollars, but the more we looked at it the more we found that [Greentree would] actually make our business simpler and more flexible to run”

Real rapid deployment – no real risk to business continuity

The Greentree business partner have provided amazing support and quickly grasped SellAgence business requirements. Emirali explains that in actual fact they undertook two back-to-back implementations – the first to replicate existing business processes which was completed within two months with no problems.

The second was implementation of new business from Kodak which was also completed within two months with no problems. Emirali’s view is that more time and resource’s are generally required during a tier one systems implementation so on the face of it, Greentree posed less risk to business continuity than a tier one implementation.

Good news for the money people - lower total cost of ownership

When Emirali and colleagues researched Greentree they were pleasantly surprised by the value for money and low total cost of ownership. Since Greentree requires less resource, especially in terms of maintenance, upgrading and testing, “over a three or four year period it is reasonably cheap to run,” says Emirali which makes the Return on Investment much quicker.

But wait there’s more! Emirali adds that in terms of IT infrastructure, Greentree runs on a single Intel/Windows server whereas a tier one system generally requires a larger Enterprise wide architecture with higher overall costs. Greentree’s lower infrastructural requirements have resulted in a cost reduction of around 70% which should make your money people grin from ear-to-ear.

Qlikview and Greentree combine to produce super-quick reporting

“We outsource our Data Warehouse function to experts who understand SellAgence business requirements and provide data analysis and reports we understand using Qlikview” says Emirali. This works really well for SellAgence but Emirali says “the real value for SellAgence is in the way Qlikview stores data.” He goes on to say that “our data storage requirements have drastically reduced and we get noticeably faster reports which saves so much time.”

Improved business agility and responsiveness

Brand management is a competitive market segment and to better service its customers which includes Procter & Gamble, Ferrero and Kodak, SellAgence required a level of agility and simplicity not available in a tier one system. SellAgence now have a right-fitting system which can be quickly modified to respond to competitive forces in the business environment with no trade-off in functionality and they will be able to offer additional services to customers much faster. Case in point is new business from Kodak which SellAgence has been able to quickly incorporate into their business processes.

SellAgence are confident in the scalability of Greentree and have plans for how they will utilise it to help further their business goals well into the future.

About SellAgence

SellAgence provides market management services for global brands, such as Procter & Gamble, Ferrero and Kodak, managing around $250 million in retail sales for clients.

For more information visit www.sellagence.co.nz