TIE
Case Study: TIE
Industry: Software Developer
Solution: Exact Globe and Synergy ERP Suit
Country: Netherlands
About The Company
TIE is an international software company established in 1987 and focused on business interoperability. TIE plays a major role in global eBusiness standardization by enabling companies to synchronize product information and business processes with partners in the supply chain. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company has offices in the United States, Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Hungary and is represented in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. TIE is a public company listed on the EuroNext Stock Exchange (TIE) with thousands of customers across all major industry sectors.
The Situation
Like many companies starting out, TIE developed their own system in 1987 for managing key business processes. Over time, the company grew and additional development was required to meet its changing needs. By 2003, TIE was maintaining more than 30 applications built on three separate databases. These home grown systems were costly to maintain because the systems were disconnected, there was a lot of duplicate data entry, and many of the processes were still paper-based.
According to CEO Dick Raman.“People were entering the same data into different systems (usually different people trying to enter the same data into different systems). The data didn’t sync. It was a hopeless mess that you couldn’t even begin to fix by linking the systems together.” TIE was growing through acquisition and the problems of its legacy systems were amplified by the legacy systems of each new acquisition. It needed one system for the whole company to share information on products, customers, financial reporting, etc.
The Solution
TIE chose Globe™ with Synergy® from Exact Software™ to unify its worldwide business operations. Globe Enterprise and Synergy provide consolidated financial reporting, customer relationship management, human resource management, knowledge management, project management, and business process management in a single database solution. “TIE and Exact Software have very similar businessmodels. We’re both software companies with subsidiaries and business partners all over the world,” said Raman. “Since Exact uses Globe and Synergy to run its own business, I figured it would work well for us.”
The company now has access to accurate, consistent, timely data from anywhere in the world. TIE embraced Globe and Synergy so enthusiastically, they decided to call the solution “My-TIE,” to reflect the impact it has on all aspects of company operations. Customer information is stored in a single database, used by all the company’s operations worldwide and allowing TIE to serve its customers on a truly global basis. It’s made the sales process more tangible. Managers can quickly get an overview of all sales activities, down to the individual salesperson, product line, or customer. The unified business management system from Exact Software involves a lot more than just customer data. Raman has one source for information about his worldwide operations. With one click, he can drill down from the balance sheet to see the underlying transaction. Using the project management, document management, and workflow capabilities of Synergy, much of the paperwork has been eliminated. All incoming mail and documents are scanned and entered in Synergy. International teams of TIE employees work together across divisions and time zones, without anything falling through the cracks. By relying on Synergy, the company has actually reduced its international telecommunications costs. “Exact Software has helped us to gain control of our business processes. We have definitely experienced a positive return on our investment,” said Raman. “Without My-TIE, we would have had to hire a lotmore administrative people. Plus, we’ve been able to greatly reduce the IS staff at regional offices. Since Exact solutions can be accessed through an Internet browser, all we have to administer is an Internet connection. If that goes down, we pick up our laptops and work from home.”
Benefits and Results
Worldwide implementation delivers exceptional value for TIE The real test of the new system came during the international roll-out. The U.S. subsidiary, for example, had all their own systems and software licenses with no hope of streamlining. At the end of every month they would submit a financial report that would have to be consolidated at headquarters, causing double work and inaccuracies. Now, the entire company has one general ledger and chart of accounts, and the balances are available in real-time. “At first, rolling out the new system in the U.S. was challenging,” reported Raman. “People were skeptical. But, enthusiasm for the project built as they saw what Synergy can do and learned for themselves that using workflow requests is much easier than paper based processes. What I find significant is that my very experienced U.S. controller, who thought she’d seen it all, is now very enthusiastic about Globe.”
When TIE purchased a controlling interest in TIE France SAS,the value of Globe and Synergy were immediately apparent. The employees started using My-TIE from day one. The information they could access on customers was a tremendous source of leads from the start and there were none of the financial reporting headaches associated with previous acquisitions. Overall the new system, built
Exact technology, made integrating this new subsidiary a much improved experience.
