Pronto-Moscow (NORBIT: Management of media holding)

In November, 2009 Pronto-Moscow media holding the project of transfer of an information system of the company to the version of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 started. Project participants call it the largest implementation of AX 2009 this year. The contractor - NORBIT company (enters into the Lanit group) - intends to complete all works to the second quarter 2010. Transaction amount is not disclosed by participants. In December, 2010 the NORBIT company announced end of the complex project on transfer of a corporate system of management of one of the largest media holdings "Pronto-Moscow" to the new version of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. Functionality of the implemented solution allowed to increase the level of implementation of sales processes of services, distribution of products, financial management and work of electronic office.

In November, 2009 NORBIT made the analysis of architecture of the current information system "Pronto-Moscow" and completed development of functional design of its upgraded version by the beginning of 2010.

Use of Microsoft Dynamics AX in Pronto-Moscow media holding extends to all basic financial and economic business processes: from pricing and sale of promotion services before registration of electronic payments and management accounting.

Possibilities of the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 platform allowed to optimize significantly functionality of the information management system Pronto-Moscow and to adapt industry business processes to new requirements of business – work performance improvement, increase in reliability of financial information and ensuring efficiency of closing of transactions. The NORBIT company which we have long-term experience with the companies of the media industry and also several successful projects on transfer of functionality of Microsoft Dynamics AX to new version 2009 acted as the contractor of the project in Pronto-Moscow media holding.

Within the implemented project the NORBIT company significantly finished functionality of the financial module: payroll calculation, personnel records, cost accounting of printed materials and accounting of transactions on IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standard). Besides sales process of printed materials and placement of advertizing content was improved.

Thanks to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 the possibility of flexible management by pricing and automatic calculation of different types of discounts for the rendered services appeared. Mechanisms of integration into the external software – the system of placement of advertisements and the system of a business intelligence Cognos were also successfully adapted.

The previous third version of Microsoft Dynamics AX was implemented in Pronto-Moscow in 2006. In a system all financial circuit, including accounting and tax accounting, operations on sale and accounting of an exit of advertizing and printing editions, specific to media business, including acceptance of advertisements, distribution of products, automatic calculation of remunerations to promotion agents and so forth is implemented. In total in a system more than 200 employees of the company worked.

The IBS company implemented the previous version of Axapta. Then the customer noted that the choice of IBS was caused by high reputation of integrator. But after three years, Pronto-Moscow decided to refuse services of IBS. The customer could not comment on the reason of this solution. IBS also did not want to answer questions of the correspondent of TAdviser.

Norbita says that customers rather often give works on transfer of a system, its updating and development to other consulting companies. "So it developed that by this moment we saved up enough extensive work experience with the media companies, we have quite good competences as in the field of implementation of CRM, and ERP solutions for media, well we understand business processes, specific to the industry, that allows to implement the project in a short time and with maximum efficiency. We think, it played not the last role when choosing NORBIT on the current project", - Shakhlevich Anton the head of practice of Microsoft Dynamics of NORBIT company says.

Market participants do not deny that the customer made a choice for benefit of NORBIT because of existence of industry developments. Nevertheless, business protsesov publishing holding experts do not support the idea about specificity. "Even in two publishing houses business processes differ. In such projects the specifics of the industry are negligible in comparison with an implementation methodology, expert knowledge of specialists of integrator therefore any company specializing in implementation of Microsoft Dynamics AX, the similar project would can do quite", - Tabakov Pavel, the director of business development of practice of IBM of Columbus IT company is sure.

According to information TAdviser, Pronto replaced IBS as the contractor not only on ERP- the project. BI- the solution created IBS was replaced with a system from Columbus IT (IBM Cognos with the data warehouse on DBMS Oracle).