KUALA LUMPUR – Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) today need to leverage smartly on technology to stay competitive with the ability to respond to market needs faster, and more so in the post-pandemic environment.
A case in point is PXL Marketing Sdn Bhd, one of Malaysia’s leading disposable food packaging suppliers offering a wide variety of high-quality disposable food packaging and hygiene products suitable across all industries.
“As a manufacturer of disposable food packaging, our corporate culture is to always ‘do the right thing’. Our disposable food packaging products are eco-friendly, hence minimising negative impact on the environment is in line with our sustainability efforts,” said PXL Marketing Managing Director Keith Tan.
Now that Malaysia has moved to post-pandemic stage, PXL’s top priority is business growth coupled with prompt fulfilment to enable customers to smoothly run their businesses.
Its visionary management has made technology a core component of its business, with SAP’s Business One solution at the heart of PXL’s operations.
“SAP Business One is SAP’s solution for small and midsize businesses, such as PXL, to grow in its digital transformation. It offers an affordable way to manage an entire business by helping companies streamline processes, act on timely information, and drive profitable growth,” stated Kenneth dela Cerna, SAP Business One Business Leader.
“SAP Business One was our technology of choice in preparation for PXL’s Industrial Revolution 4.0 (4IR) readiness along with the transition to intelligent technologies on the cloud to realise our business aspirations,” said Keith. “It has been instrumental in helping PXL connect and streamline processes, while also serving as a catalyst of growth.”
“What’s even more wonderful about SAP Business One is that it provides us with a ‘single version of truth’ and also empowers our workforce to access accurate information in real time,” he added.
During the pandemic, and like many other businesses, PXL also had business challenges – but the company was able to rise above them.
“Key incidents such as the Suez Canal blockage in March 2021 and the closure of several China’s main ports due to Covid-19 outbreaks affected raw material availability and impacted the already affected supply chain industry, leading to increased product demand with limited stock supply,” recalled Keith.
“From the observation and learnings, we gathered since early days of the pandemic, PXL has taken pre-emptive measures to increase stock capacity. We started the process in Q4 2021 to relocate into a bigger warehouse facility in Malaysia’s Bukit Jalil Integrated Business Park.”
As a result, PXL’s inventory and warehouse management system has improved tremendously, realising a 30% increase in productivity according to company estimates.
“Thanks to SAP Business One which provided better alignment between the sales and supply chain teams, PXL benefited from better inventory monitoring and stock projection to ensure better stock management for PXL’s consumers,” said Keith.
As PXL operations rely on the interconnected global supply chain network, SAP Business One was also instrumental in providing reliable integration between Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) with the PXL integrated portal providing enhanced data insights for delivery while also improving versatility and access.
Although the pandemic brought numerous local SMEs to their knees due to restrictions imposed as a result of the Movement Control Order (MCO), PXL could continue flying strongly as the workforce could operate remotely including conducting internal sales training and customer consultations.
“SAP’s CRM and Opportunity Module was timely implemented for us to digitise our processes and maximise our work-from-home resources. The data extraction and integration capabilities have helped empower our Supply Chain Department to conduct forecasts for our exclusive customers to accomplish the company’s achievement beyond the industry standard,” he said.
“This has also contributed for a more seamless management and connectivity across PXL’s different departments,” concluded Keith.
