BY EMEKA AGINAM
A&P Foods, one of the leading Nigerian manufacturer of biscuits and confectionery has deployed Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 to automate its operations.

Accordingly, the implementation of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 has helped the confectionery company reduce the theft of essential goods like flour and sugar since the company now has direct insight into how much stock it is holding at any given moment.

As a result the company witnessed improvement in its revenues; reduction in bad debt; better control over inventory and benefits from far greater efficiencies across its operations.

Since beginning of its operations in 2002, the company had developed a reputation for producing high-quality products that helped them build an extensive network of buyers in the Nigerian market. Previously the company was using Tally and Microsoft Excel.

However, with the expanding business the company felt that neither Tally nor Excel could meet its needs with the accuracy and efficiency required.

According to Prakash P.V., IT Manager at A&P Foods , “We evaluated a number of ERP solutions available in the market and Microsoft’s solution came out in top in terms of the wide-ranging functionality it offered as well as support.”

Elaborating further, he said that, “Univision Nigeria Ltd, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, implemented Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 over several months and the process also included some custom-made development. The Univision team also provided continuous support and coordinated an upgrade to version 2013 of Dynamics NAV for A&P Foods”.

Prakash P.V. further adds that, “The new solution led to radical improvements – previously inventory control was extremely difficult, but today we have much better stock control, which in turn has led to much tighter financial controls. We have far greater accuracy in billing and scheduling and overall Dynamics NAV has led to far greater efficiency across all of our operations.”

Manual processes have been replaced with automated processes and as a result, there was an increase in revenue and reports could be generated at any time.

Besides profiting with reduced theft, A&P also experienced that the company’s bad debt fall by 50%, while customer satisfaction has increased by 80% as orders were now being met and delivered on time.

With these upgrades in place, A&P Foods in in a much stronger position to focus on and expand their operations to the next phase of growth.