Synergistic Innovations

“Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a flexible and robust system that can grow together with our business. The platform empowers us with real-time visibility from our 35 subsidiary companies. Reporting time has been reduced from weeks to mere minutes, saving us 8 to 12 man-hours of consolidation work per month.”

Kok Wei Bee, Chief Financial Officer,

Daya Materials Berhad

Established in 1994, Daya Materials Berhad envisioned to create a Malaysian integrated oil and gas (O&G) company with a global reach. Now a major player in the region, with O&G operations throughout the Asia Pacific, Daya Materials holds interests in companies and subsidiaries that involve both upstream and downstream O&G sectors, including engineering, construction and investments.

Due to the diversified nature of the group, with varied business natures and business models, Daya Materials faced the challenge of visibility across its subsidiaries. “In the past, prior to the company’s mergers and acquisitions, this was not an issue,” says Kok Wei Bee, Chief Financial Officer, Daya Materials Berhad. “However, with our present corporate structure, we faced the lack of visibility, in terms of profitability and business growth among the companies and subsidiaries within the group. Our previous system was unable to support management’s demand for timely reporting. We had no standardized accounting systems within the group, resulting in difficulty in tracking and managing current business processes.”

The Group currently oversees 35 subsidiaries across the Asia Pacific region, with companies comprising six core business types. According to Ms. Kok, this often contributed to delays in accounting and decision-making. “Previously, we had to rely on finance departments of our various subsidiaries to give us reports, which we collated and analyzed manually,” she said. These came from varied systems, including UBS, TBS, MYOB and Biztrack, among others. “We could not assess our business intelligence in real-time.”

Solution

The decision to adopt Microsoft Dynamics NAV was made upon close evaluation of comparable products. Daya Materials worked with Synergistic in deploying Dynamics NAV, ensuring compliance with Microsoft vendor standards. Ms. Kok says that the company’s deployment of Microsoft Dynamics NAV did not require expensive and time-consuming customization work. “It can handle our various business requirements with just the standard and ready solution,” she says. “We do not need to spend a lot for customization, in order to get a system that can fit into our environment.”

In deploying Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Daya Materials split the implementation into groups and stages due to the wide spectrum of business involvement and the different locations of the business operation. By splitting into groups, the company was able to see the visible success and results from the implementation much faster. “The whole implementation had been carried out according to the plan,” says Ms. Kok.

Benefits

“Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a flexible system that can grow together with our business,” says Ms. Kok. “The platform empowers us with real-time visibility from our 35 subsidiary companies. Reporting time has been reduced from weeks to mere minutes, saving us 8 to 12 man-hours of consolidation work per month.”

Standardized reporting and documents. According to Ms. Kok, the Group chose to deploy Microsoft Dynamics NAV because of its “flexible reporting with advanced and user-friendly reporting tools.” This is particularly important due to the varied business natures of the companies under the Group. “We need to consolidate data into a system that is able to cater to various business and reporting requirements, yet still maintain control and visibility from the headquarters.”

Real-time data for insightful business decisions. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV, the company is now more agile in making business decisions based on information from various subsidiaries under the group, and this happens in real-time. “The standardization of reporting and documents, chart of accounts, and streamlining of the accounting process flow empowers the management in planning and controlling the costs,” says Ms. Kok. “We are able to track project costing and product costing easily. Each month, we save 8 man-hours of work from having to consolidate financial reports and analysis work on the Group results, not to mention the time spent having to wait for individual reports to come in.”

Significant cost savings from streamlined business processes. According to Ms. Kok, Daya Materials uses Microsoft Dynamics NAV to run and support many of its mission-critical business processes throughout the region. “We use Microsoft Dynamics NAV for our entire operation, which includes billing, jobs monitoring, purchasing, asset maintenance, stock control and financial management. Each month, we save 8 to 12 man-hours, from HQ alone, in developing inventory reports, product costing reports and project cost tracking reports.”

Standardized reporting, documents and chart of accounts. Daya Materials chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV due to flexibility and ease of use. According to Ms. Kok, partner Synergistic’s experience in building solutions for other reputable organizations in Malaysia contributed to Daya’s decision to deploy Microsoft Dynamics NAV through the partner. “The template helps us standardize the operations process in an effective manner. This allows us to streamline our processes and deploy more quickly.”

As its next steps, Daya Materials is planning to upgrade its Dynamics NAV deployment to the latest version, which one of its newest subsidiaries is actually already running. The company is currently working on incorporating goods and services tax (GST), a new requirement for Malaysian companies. According to Daya Materials, its Dynamics NAV deployment should easily incorporate this feature, and the company no longer has to worry about finding a supplier or vendor to cater to this particular need.