Zenit won the ICT innovation award

As part of its circuit of events in a variety of locations, conceived in association with the Politecnico di Milano School of Management to support local firms in facing the challenges posed by today`s market through optimal use of modern technologies, the Smau has selected the Zenit Group as winner of the Smau Business Padua North-East Italy ICT Innovation Award. 

The Application

Zenit’s Modena location delivers the IT services for both production plants and the sales locations. The Chinese plant is able to access the ERP system, the email server and the corporate Intranet by means of a VPN connection. The management of locations in Asia and Italy, thousands of kilometres apart with different time zones and languages, is an extremely complex undertaking. The previous vertical sectorial management system, developed by an Italian software house, would have required a large amount of adaptation to support Zenit’s international organisation, thus increasing the complexity of the company’s assortment of applications. Therefore, during 2006, the company launched a project for the adoption of a new SAP international ERP, drawing on the association with Elsag Datamat, a SAP partner. The fact that the new management system is widely used throughout the world was one of the main drivers behind the choice of software. This made it possible to source qualified, skilled staff during both the adoption and the use of the new ERP in each of Zenit’s foreign subsidiaries. For the implementation of the Accounts, Finance and Financial Control modules, the company used the services of local professionals, able to advise Zenit in the various stages of the project with regard to the tax and accounting legislation in force in Asian countries. From the operational standpoint, Zenit now has a complete view of the performances of its corporate processes both in Italy and in the Asian subsidiaries, with the wished-for level of detail. For example, in the Sales area, the Italian Sales Manager is able to view the sales trends in the various countries and share the results with his Asian colleagues, who have the same information at their disposal in their native languages. The Business Intelligence module allows the preparation of reports for the sales staff, distributed to the sales agents by Internet. Previously, these activities were supported by software developed ad hoc, which required constant updates, with considerable effort in terms of the time and resources used. Moreover, the introduction of a product configurator has improved communications between the sales subsidiaries and the Zenit headquarters in Italy. Each subsidiary is now able to enter its orders with customisation of the complex Zenit products directly in Chinese. Headquarters receives these same orders in Italian.