Old melody creates a new tone
Ten Ren Tea Company reengineers ERP system, play the victorious melody

Customer Profile

Ten Ren Tea, the best know tea manufacturer and retail sailor, promotes the tea art of Chinese quintessence enthusiastically. Under the vision of “the second reform of old business, new management”, the company took the retail, dining, and distribution into combination for the objective of “persistent competence”. Thus to develop the company’s long-lasting values by quality service and breakthrough culture in order to achieve the goal of “ wherever the footprint is, Ten Ren Tea is always there”.
New store locations, branch establishment and access the instant sales information to adapt the market requirements and customer’s satisfactions became the crucial issues of management. All above have to rely on the help of IT system to produce the correct and instant information for management judgment.

Challenge

The headquarter audit room’s vice manager Chen Chung Chih said, as Ten Ren Tea has various operating ERP systems and in-house developed ones in headquarter, factories and stores, the integration is a must for management.
In the past, it took about 2 or 3 days to deliver the clearing of each front unit’s inventory data to the headquarter system for analysis, in the result the management could not command the data promptly. Moreover, it had been more than 14 years since the first development to the following maintenance, the more and more plug-in programs for being adapted to the original kernel programs had made the data calculating process difficult to be analyzed, which had serious influence on the data accuracy, such as the difference between the inventory forms and in-shop stocks. As the old system’s application efficiency didn’t fit the users’ requirements, plus the weak integration and expansion, Ten Ren decided to implement ERT after the internal evaluations.
Therefore, each store’s accountant delivered integrating POS’s data to internal ERP to produce the necessary information for daily management and calculating each store’s income and balance. However, the digital information was subject to the accountant’s personal opinion. The various standards of each store’s judgment dramatically damaged the accuracy of performance management and decisions

Solution

After the strictly internal evaluations of ERP implementation, the good quality of international brand and the corresponding staff’s quality and proficiency are the crucial points for deciding the cooperative partner.
The internal research was lasting for about 1.5 years before the system implementation, which was a rather conscientious process. According to Chen, the chose some global brands with stable quality among the international and domestics companies, then Oracle was chosen by its efforts on Taiwan, their quantity of clients, the quality of matching consultants and system support. Oracle recommended IBM, AdvancedTEK and other consulting groups to Ten Ren. After two-day long deep interview, AdvancedTEK became the choice because of the quality consulting services, deep understanding in this industry and more successful implementation cases.
Although other companies accordingly suggested that Ten Ren should abolish the original system , AdvancedTEK’s advise was based on the client’s requirements , to keep the kernel functions of the original ERP system as well as some customized functions for promoting the functions and applications of the old system and structure.
How to integrate Ten Ren’s different operating systems was quite a challenge for AdvancedTEK’s group. Moreover, Tan Ren didn’t have enough IT resources as other hi-tech companies, but fully determined to practice the project, which made the implementation consulting team have the greatest esteem.
The AdvancedTEK ‘s project manager Patrick ( Tai Yuan Hou) said, under the guide of the president Lin Tsung Ren, there were more than 20 members in the project, inclusive of the leader Hsu Wen Yuan, the factory chief of Shiang Shan, Tao Fen, Mioli county, the executive assistant, the headquarter audit room’s Chen Chung Chih for coordination as well as other members from operation, factory affairs and IT departments etc.
AvacnedTek has implemented more than 100 EPR projects, Tan Ran’s implementation was longer if compared to other cases. The reason was that Tan Ran took good care of each steps in implementation and training. The most valuable part’s the cooperation between the users and IT department. From the seed instructors of AvacnedTek to the seed instructors of each store in every zone, more than 60 stores finished the launch training and fully understand the operation by way of their assistances.
Before the implementation, Ten Ran’s president had been cooperated with National Taiwan University College of management to provide the management the necessary lessons for enterprise digitalization. The transition from the mental preparation to the change of systems reduced the staff’s rejection.
Furthermore, the intense “human touch” of devotion was also the key point of the success of the project. The “human touch” of high-ranking manager—concern about employees’ situation, help for resolving problems and giving rewards, which made all the staff do the effort for launching. The effect of implementation was obvious to all. Because of the human touch, he English operation interface of Oracle was not challenging any more.

Key Benefit

AvacnedTek adopted the first brand of ERP, Oracle, helping Tan Ran to do the implementation. By way of Oracle’s strict system design and the international standards, each store could have the unified and clear calculation. The reports now are finished by system instead of human. With other plug-in programs, the management data could be more easier and accurate. The monthly close was on the 6th day of each month before the implementation, now it could be done earlier to 2nd of each month for financial and management accounts. All the project AvacnedTek’s managers made the highest compliments to Ten Ran staff’s learning competence and devotion.
It took more than one year from implementation to launch on Jan 2005. Except for Oracle’s ERP, Tan Ran also introduced POS and network structure, which was the first time for Ten Ran’s integration of POS and ERP, also the milestone of this enterprise’s IT structure in the recent years.