BPA Platform integrates SAP Business One, EPOS system and SAP Concur; automates data checking, reporting and sales alerts
Codeless Platforms today revealed that Graff Diamonds, one of the world’s most renowned diamond companies, has gained significant ROI by automating a multitude of business processes with BPA Platform. Using it to integrate multiple SAP Business One systems, over 50 EPOS systems and SAP Concur, the Graff family and employees now have a complete overview of the company’s operations and can reallocate resources to expand the business.
“The flexibility of BPA Platform is remarkable. The things that you can do with it are out of this world. It never ceases to amaze me. Every single week are creating a new report or adjusting something; automating a task that someone has requested. I always equate BPA Platform to being a staff member that never sleeps. It’s like an incredibly efficient person, or team of people, checking data, that never stops,” enthused Malcolm MacLean, Global Head of IT, Graff Diamonds.
“It sounds brutal, but the fact is we are replacing humans checking data. As we get bigger, acquire more stock and open more stores it’s getting to the point where we simply can’t have people physically checking all the data because there is just too much to check. However, the plus side to this is that it enables our staff, across the company, to get on with other tasks – expanding the business rather than just reporting and spending time churning out the same reports.”
With Graff Diamonds rapidly expanding around the globe, the company needed to introduce a business system that would integrate all its business processes and provide the Graff family and relevant employees with a complete overview of the company’s operations.
Following a thorough consultancy period, in which Codestone, an award-winning SAP Gold Partner, investigated Graff’s business processes, it was agreed to roll out SAP Business One to all of Graff Diamonds’ stores. Codestone’s System One was also installed, to provide a bespoke database application framework for extending SAP Business One, along with BPA Platform, to provide automation capabilities and integration between the various systems, including Graff’s bespoke POS (point of sale) system built on System One.
“We’ve got dozens of SAP Business One companies for all the entities around the world, with System One sitting on top of all of them. The handy thing about BPA Platform is that it dips in and out of both System One and SAP Business One – collating and reporting on them simultaneously. Essentially, it does a lot of work that would normally require a user to sit there and perform huge query extractions in one system and then another,” explained Malcolm MacLean. “We have our own POS system, that Codestone developed, which is integrated with SAP Business One via BPA Platform. As sales are added in the POS system BPA Platform automatically pushes the data into SAP Business One. It also links SAP Concur with SAP Business One, pushing data in and out.”
With over 50 stores around the world, sales activity within the business is obviously constant throughout a 24-hour period. Whenever a sale occurs the Graff family and business departments need to be alerted. Therefore, Graff has created a task to monitor and report on these sales.
“If a sale is entered into our POS system in any store around the world BPA Platform immediately sees that new sale and triggers an appropriate alert to family members, finance, regional divisions and store managers to let them know the details of the sale – the piece of stock, the sale price, the currency, any shipping details etc. BPA Platform instantly retrieves that information and sends an email out. It’s just running 24 hours a day,” said Malcolm MacLean.
Keeping track of currency fluctuations and impending duties are also important factors for Graff Diamonds, so the company uses BPA Platform to monitor and automate alerts.
“We sell our items in a lot of currencies and so there’s never a day when something isn’t moving around. BPA Platform sends an appropriate email to inform us when a currency has breached the amount we are currently trading at. We can then decide whether or not to reprice some of our goods,” said Malcolm MacLean. “When we move items around the world we have various duty levels where we have to pay tax in and out of countries. Sometimes those items can only be allowed to stay in that country for a certain amount of time. BPA Platform now alerts us in advance when an item is due to be extracted out of a country or left there and duty paid on it. It is incredibly important.”
Graff Diamonds has been using BPA Platform for a number of years now and is still hugely impressed with its capabilities, especially the ROI it receives from automating fairly mundane tasks.
“The main benefit is time – the hours saved generating and manipulating reports. The sheer hourly numbers of staff time that’s been saved is incredible. I can identify ten reports which were taking users in excess of three to four hours a week to generate, whereas BPA Platform can just generate them and spit them out instantly. It eliminates errors, saves time and eradicates people actually manufacturing reports themselves,” said Malcolm MacLean.
About Codeless Platforms
Founded in 1999, Codeless Platforms is a highly experienced and trusted software company that develops data integration, business process automation and rapid application development solutions. Our two flexible, powerful platforms – BPA Platform and Applications Platform – enable organisations to take full control over their data as well as respond to the rapidly changing demands of business today.
Our knowledge of the marketplace and channel has grown in line with this development and established us as a highly experienced and reputable software company, working with partners and software vendors (Access, Infor, Microsoft, Sage and SAP) who have the confidence to invest in Codeless Platforms.
With over 450 global partners, more than 7500 customers use Codeless Platforms’ software solutions, ranging from diverse global organisations to the small local enterprise. The company is headquartered in Poole, UK, with representative offices throughout the world.
