Globe Diffusion, Konica Minolta Supplies Manufacturing and Parrot Select SAP® Business One to Support Ambitious Growth Strategies and Enable Real-Time Reporting
PARIS — SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that three of France’s premier small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) have selected SAP® Business One as their business management solution to enable integrated operations and easy access to business-critical information. The companies join the nearly 10,000 SMEs worldwide running SAP Business One—software delivered through a network of 1,211 qualified SAP partners and available with more than 250 add-ons and in 40 country versions. Globe Diffusion, a marketing agency; Parrot, a supplier of voice recognition and signal processing; and Konica Minolta Supplies Manufacturing, a French subsidiary of digital imaging company Konica Minolta, have deployed the software with SAP partners GTI and Infoclip. Leveraging SAP Business One, the French small enterprises aim to back their rapid moves to international, multi-site operations while remaining fast and flexible in meeting customer demands and tightly integrating with supplier and partner networks. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® ’06, SAP’s international customer conference, being held in Paris, France, May 30 – June 1.
Each of the French companies is using SAP Business One to connect its critical operations into a single, integrated business management solution that links financial, production, manufacturing and customer relationship management (CRM) processes and features tight integration with Microsoft Outlook and tools to gain accurate data across their enterprises.
Globe Diffusion Supports International Growth with SAP Business One
Since its foundation in Paris in 2002, Globe Diffusion rapidly has built a national network of nine independently managed subsidiaries in France, with 230 employees nationwide. Among the field marketing agency’s clientele are companies including Metro International, Coca Cola, Henkel, Pixmania.com, TF1 Nokia, and L’Oréal. Globe Diffusion replaced its Sage system with SAP Business One for an initial 12 users in an October 2005 test phase, recently growing the deployment to 40 users. The nine subsidiaries access the solution via terminal services.
“We were looking for a global solution which supports our international company growth as we are planning on extending our business to countries outside France,” said Jérémy Dahan, CEO of Globe Diffusion. “SAP Business One enables us to monitor our activity thanks to integrated reports and alert functionality it offers. It also allows us to effectively manage customer information—an essential part of our business—thanks to the CRM functionality embedded in the solution.”
Parrot Goes Global with SAP Business One
With only 20 employees in 2001, Parrot developed its Bluetooth-based voice recognition and signal processing technology. A mere five years later, the company’s products—hands-free cell phone car kits—now can be found in almost every modernly-equipped car, and Parrot collaborates regularly with famous manufacturers such as PSA, Ferrari, Renault-Nissan as well as Siemens VDP and Visteon. Since its foundation, Parrot has extended its business and is now present with subsidiaries in four European countries, the United States and China. One year ago, Parrot’s executive board in Paris decided to replace Sage software with SAP Business One. The SAP application is now run in every subsidiary to connect operations throughout the company network.
“With SAP Business One, we finally found a solution which provides an integrated overview of the different parts of our business with an excellent cost-performance ratio,” said Sébastien Guy, SAP project manager at Parrot. “The product enables us to continue our growth strategy at an aggressive speed while connecting important information from various departments such as production and stock management with sales and purchasing to achieve a transparent overview of operations at any time we need it.”
Konica Minolta Supplies Manufacturing Replaces Silo IT
In September 2005, Konica Minolta Supplies Manufacturing, a subsidiary producing toner powder for copiers and assembling toner cartridges for printers, made the decision to replace numerous, disparate applications that made it difficult to communicate and share data among the systems. After careful evaluation, Konica Minolta Business Supplies Manufacturing France selected SAP Business One as well as Industry One, an add-on solution for production management developed by SAP partner GTI. The tight integration of the add-on solution into SAP Business One and the implementation know-how of GTI were primary drivers of the selection process. In addition, SAP Business One interfaces seamlessly with the mySAP™ Business Suite environment of the Konica Minolta Group, allowing for greater visibility and collaboration.
“With the combined strengths of GTI and SAP and the integrated business management solution, we were convinced that this would be the best answer to our needs during and after implementation,” said Didier Gruhier, IT manager at Konica Minolta Supplies Manufacturing. “Another strong argument was the attractive price of SAP Business One in relation to the functionality. As the solution is highly integrated, we can also achieve our key targets of improved work flows and reduced redundancy.”
“Small and midsize enterprises are gearing up for new expansion strategies, and with our solutions for businesses of all sizes we can provide them with the tools to manage business-critical information and realize their goals for growth,” said Ernie Gunst, president, EMEA NEWS region, SAP. “Customers such as Globe Diffusion, Parrot and Konica Minolta Supplies Manufacturing are demonstrating the advantages small businesses can gain by deploying an integrated business management platform.”
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