Comptel Saves Money and Improves Productivity with Microsoft ERP System
It’s been said that information is the oxygen of the modern age—and there’s nowhere that’s truer than in business. For today’s companies, information is the oxygen of business success. With near real-time visibility into company wide data, organizations can take quick action and change direction as needs dictate.
Mikko Hytönen, chief financial officer at Comptel, recognized that truth when considering how best to address the challenges of running an international operation. A software development company based in Finland, Comptel is the preferred operations support system provider for the telecommunications industry worldwide. Hytönen realized Comptel would benefit from an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that would seamlessly connect headquarters with all over 20 international locations.
The company had been running SAP R3 in three of its offices, and home-grown systems in other locations. With so many different systems, consolidating financial data across the company was a complex and time-consuming process.
Comptel needed a single ERP instance that it could use for its entire global operation. After narrowing its list to Microsoft Dynamics AX and SAP ECC, the company chose Microsoft Dynamics AX because of its simplicity and low cost of ownership. “SAP ECC had more modules and features than we really needed or wanted to pay for,” says Hytönen. “And no vendor, except for Efima, our Microsoft partner, could really tell us how they would meet our needs in a simple and cost-effective manner.”
By deploying Dynamics AX as a service, Comptel was able to avoid the long implementation schedules that plague many large-scale ERP deployments. In total, the implementation took about 10 months, compared to a projected 13 to 16 months for SAP ECC.
Currently, about 100 Comptel employees use Dynamics AX every day for project management and accounting, and to manage financial and human resources information. In addition, all 650 company employees use the ERP solution to report their time.
With Dynamics AX, Comptel has gained better insight into the global business, while standardizing processes companywide. Among the benefits are:
- Saved costs. Deploying Dynamics AX cost an estimated €400,000 ($524,000) less than deploying SAP ECC. It also eliminated the need for the company’s SAP maintenance contract that cost €150,000 ($197,000) per year.
- Improved access to company data. With global, near real-time visibility into financial and operational data across the company, the company now has a single view into its global operations. As a result, Comptel employees can now easily identify and make adjustments to ongoing projects, thus maximizing company profitability.
- Increased productivity. With a single ERP system, Comptel standardized its processes and reorganized its financial management, helping it to improve productivity. In the finance department, for example, employees no longer spend time on low-value tasks such as finding and consolidating information for global reporting.
By choosing Microsoft Dynamics AX, Comptel further strengthens its position as the preferred operations support system provider for the telecommunications industry. Says Hytönen: “Having a single view into our global operations dramatically increases our efficiency—leaving more time to focus on our business. Our customers set high standards for our products and we demand equal performance from our internal systems.”
To learn more, please read the full Comptel case study.
