TAdviser Interview: Experts Spetsenergotrans how IT solve relevant problems of the transport and logistic company

Irina Yumatova: The transport and logistic branch of the economy dynamically changes in recent years - there is a consolidation of operators, restructuring of transport hubs. Maintenance of financial stability, increase in efficiency of work with clients, reducing costs for transportation of goods and performance improvement become key tasks of business.

Denis Yeremeyev: Collection of data on the rolling stock, timely processing and providing business to users of necessary information – the main problem and a task. And still timely preparation of summary information for the management for the purpose of acceptance of high-quality management decisions.

Irina Yumatova: Approaches to business planning change, use of modern technologies, budgeting process optimization is required. Fast closing of the period, internal control, data analysis – all these functions are important in performance management of the company. Respectively, the main objectives of automation - to exclude manual work at data collection, to make obtaining information more operational, and information - reliable, relevant and qualitative.

Denis Yeremeyev: For automobile logistics the Russian automation systems of productive activity exist for a long time and there is a lot of them, and here for railway subject of similar solutions a little. There are domestic corporate ERP systems considering everything features of scope of rail transportation and operator business. However, occasionally it is economically more reasonable to implement the specialized solution and to integrate it with systems used at the enterprise, than in the available ERP system to remake the budgeting module under business processes of the company. Therefore for the purposes of budgeting we selected the Russian solution – " planet.budgeting ".

Denis Yeremeyev: On the basis of the ERP system "The automated control system for transport company" (an ACS of shopping mall) is the Russian development too. Very interesting system – it is easy in understanding from the point of view of the user and in support though there are also features – developers for 1C systems, SAP or Dynamics in the market can be found, and there are practically no shopping malls, familiar with an ACS.

Irina Yumatova: The general trend – change of approaches to planning of business and to the analysis of historical data. Regardless of market situation the companies with high operational efficiency achieve the best results. Therefore among our priorities: process automation, performance improvement and decrease in operating costs. For the financial block the main objective consists in application of IT so that there was what we already spoke above about - fast closing of the period, operating internal control. The cut of data received at the exit should be informative, allow to do the deep analysis for acceptance of effective management decisions. Automation allows to process quickly data, to obtain qualitative information on a business status therefore automation is the key direction.

Denis Yeremeyev: I will add that our company has such specifics – we are closed on decades, i.e. three times a month.

Irina Yumatova: As a rule, closing of the period is performed with frequency month, closing of the period occurring every ten days increases receivables turnover ratio.

Denis Yeremeyev: Closing occurring every ten days is a manifestation of customer focus of our company. It is so more convenient to many clients to work - quicker to make calculations for the executed operations on the rendered services, not to stretch them for a month, and to close upon execution.

Denis Yeremeyev: Requirements to automation really higher. The heavy load on specialists, is higher control level.

Denis Yeremeyev: Accounting and HR records and also an electronic document management system are implemented on products of 1C, a backup system, accounting of requests of users and information security – also Russian production. From the western products we actively use MS Office – difficult tables to users more conveniently and quicker to do in Excel, so historically it developed. Client operating systems, the system of virtualization and a half of server operating systems from Microsoft, actively we use freely extended by software where it is possible and proved.

Irina Yumatova: When choosing the platform we took the cost of the platform, implementation and ownership into account. The western analogs can be comparable at the implementation cost with the Russian developments, but their operational maintenance is many times more expensive, and in case of large-scale development it is difficult to predict possible economic effect. Besides, the Russian developments, as a rule, are better localized and consider the Russian specifics of business more.

Denis Yeremeyev: Really, both the cost of the Russian solution, and operating costs of its maintenance is, as a rule, significantly lower. One more important advantage of the Russian developments – they are in the same market realities. It is easier to agree under the terms of payment, upon discounts, upon features of interaction, by methods of providing first-line support, upon quality of service. Called – agreed – made. As we know, you will not call Microsoft and you will not ask that released a patch, all only in accordance with general practice quicker there. With the Russian developers issues are resolved much quicker, lately the quality of service for end consumers significantly increased.

Irina Yumatova: The project started in February, 2018 and in October we received a system in trial operation. The budget company the forthcoming 2019 passed entirely in Planet. Originally there was a task to automate already available methodology, but how often happens, in process the new ideas are born, and as a result a system was implemented with improvements and additions. It is necessary to tell that it is not a shrink-wrapped software product, but the full solution developed under our requirements.

Irina Yumatova: The project success caused that approach on the basis of which we also selected the platform. On start of the project our command systemically approached detailing of criteria and conditions of model for the subsequent automation. So the functionality of a budgeting system was developed and during system development all offers were at once rolled, discussed regarding implementation and approbation in the course of configuration of the platform. There is a wish to note that with IBS we, actually, underwent development of the first version of automation of budgeting in the transport and logistic industry based on the Planet platform.

Denis Yeremeyev: The Planet platform was pleasant to us approach which in it is used, namely – the multidimensional cube with a large number of in advance prepared cuts is stored in RAM (base in memory). It is implemented and works – on the computer I change value of some parameter, and in real time information is updated in all system, in all cuts, dependent on this parameter, on the screen for each user. There is an understanding that you work in collective, and it is the great advantage though which does not have a direct bearing on work of the system. The platform works steadily though there are also features – on reset of a system after installation of updates about an hour is required. But it is feature of systems of this sort with which we are ready to be reconciled. I believe that IBS developers will soon finish a system and will provide variability in the solution of this question. We developed functional requirements suitable for our industry and therefore, really at once, at the exit the qualitative industry product turned out. Now it is really interesting product from the commercial point of view, with good perspectives in transport and other industries.

Denis Yeremeyev: For today the implemented solution - implementation of budgeting in our private cloud. Upon a system represents a cloud solution therefore if necessary to us nothing will prevent "drag" a system in a cloud to one of providers.

Denis Yeremeyev: We have the non-exclusive rights to our system.

Irina Yumatova: As the technical specifications set the most complete requirements to functionality, such development of a system at this stage is not required. We can perform many tunings in a system by own efforts, and as for the general functionality, we already gave to our colleagues from IBS our wishes "on perspective" and we expect to see them in new releases.

Denis Yeremeyev: In this case process of completion of a system is transferred to outsourcing.

Irina Yumatova: The project is complete recently, a system is in commercial operation and at warranty service therefore now we can estimate reaction to our warranty requests - support works quickly.

Denis Yeremeyev: As a rule, separate a response time and time of the solution of a request. Respectively, reaction to our requests from vendor very fast. Time of the solution of requests suits us. Usually we work through support lines and the selected managers who are interested to resolve our issues quickly. But in urgent cases we have access directly to the developer that is atypical for classical support system and we consider it as an additional bonus. Qualitatively worked solution requires time and work of different specialists, in our project time for changes in a system was calculated several days.

Irina Yumatova: In a nutshell that we achieved the best quality of planning and control along with reduction of labor costs.

It is the simplest to list the main differences in comparison with traditional budgeting in Excel:

• it is automatic loading of actual data from several accounting systems – that section where earlier the error probability owing to a large number of manual transactions was always high;
• due to "cubic" structure the multidimensionality appeared - now we can build comparative reports on any cuts of data;
• there was more exact, universally configured mechanism of allocation of costs;
• multi-user work with separate access rights became possible;
• electronic approval of budgets functions.

In general, on the project it is possible to note that we resolved those issues which stood on an implementation stage.

Denis Yeremeyev: I would add to told that now there is a uniform point of the truth: all departments work in one system with the same version of the budget, but not each department with the version of data in Excel.

All up-to-date data are stored in show-windows – special integration tables in the cleaned type. Data exchange with systems production, accounting and tax accounting is automatic. Probability of emergence of errors because of a human factor is minimized.

Denis Yeremeyev: Here it is appropriate to remember a BI system which the vendor continues to develop on the same platform. The integration table which is a transfer link between our accounting systems - it is correctly formalized in respect of names of fields, a format of data, extent of their cleaning. Respectively, it is easy to use it for future BI system. And it will be the next step in development of a system which is planned for the current year and already actively develops. The pilot who is at a stage of formation of exact functional requirements to future analytical system is started – what in it there will be dashborda with what information. The most difficult task is a cleaning and formalization of data, their reduction to a common denominator. In one system data are stored in one format, in another – in another, here the VAT is considered, there is not considered, here detailing is performed on clients, there – under agreements. Connect everything and at the same time to guarantee relevance of data for the current time – the biggest complexity during creation of a BI system.

Irina Yumatova: The analytical systems are used for the purpose of formation of a common information space for heads of the average and highest level providing decision support. The web version, mobile application is planned, also the analytical tablet is not excluded.