PC Week/Re, Vol. 6, February 25, 2003

One should be pleased to see that an economic recovery is noticeable not only in the mining industries of Russia but has begun to penetrate such sectors as manufacturing and trade. They are adopting modern IT solutions, which, again, are offered by Russian companies. Confirming this thesis, the RBC SOFT firm (www.rbcsoft.ru) of the RosBusinessConsulting holding company held a joint news conference with the Russian trading and manufacturing company Icebit in Moscow on January 29. The news conference was devoted to the results of the installation of a computerized system RBC: Trade.

This system, developed by specialists of RBC SOFT, is a universal platform, built on a modular basis. Its purpose is computerization of medium-size and large trading companies in Russia. However, in practice, when this system is installed at a specific company, it becomes necessary to do a lot of work on its adaptation to real business processes. According to Ivan Timofeyev, the director of the RBC SOFT Department of Development and Installation of Corporate Systems, the cost of the RBC: Trade software, including the installation (taking into account the respective adaptation) varies from 15,000 to 45,000 dollars, depending on the number of workstations and business processes that are subject to computerization, etc.

RBC: Trade supports different kinds of DBMS, including Oracle and MS SQL Server, and the number of its users is limited only by the capacity of the database server. Respective storehouse equipment, POS terminals, scanners, printers, etc. can be connected to the system. The customer can independently extend the functions of the system. Members of staff are offered special training programs, which allow them to accomplish their tasks (preparation of reports, administration of the system, creation of interfaces, etc.).

The system for computerization of the Icebit company (according to Icebit Director Igor Smetanin, the company's sale volume reached $1m a month as of the end of December) was developed on the basis of the RBC: Trade platform over a period of 7 months. The work was divided into two stages: initially, the business processes in the central office were computerized, followed by those at the remote storehouse. The installation of the system allowed computerization of 50 workplaces in the customer service, sales, delivery, and supplies departments, as well as at the storehouse. An operator taking orders now has any information necessary. The operator can view contract prices and restrictions that could apply to orders, messages sent to the client by the company's manager, etc.

Internal systems not related to each other had been used at Icebit until recently. They included systems for planning, delivery, stock control, preparation of external reports, registration of product certificates. All of them have now been replaced with a single system. Moreover, according to Igor Smetanin, the transition to the new system was completed within several days without stopping the company's work, and data accumulated in the previous systems was used to fill the new system with information. Special converters (locks) were used for converting the data into a different format.

Interestingly, questionnaires and interviews were used during the development of the computerized system for Icebit, and the customer's participation in this process was minimal. Gradual, step-by-step introduction of the system allowed putting it into use without any interruption of the business processes.

Igor Smetanin underlined that the computerized system by RBC had allowed the company to substantially increase the efficiency of its work and to cope with the growing volume of orders without increasing the number of members of staff. The installation of this system allowed computerization of the process of document preparation to be provided for each sold product, and their printing. According to Mr. Smetanin, over 80,000 invoices were processed in 2002, and the company spent $50,000 on paper and other materials for copying. It managed to substantially reduce and optimize this huge volume of document processing with the use of RBC: Trade. The Icebit director underlined that the main problem of the adoption of the new system was overcoming the psychological barrier, since people had to give up out-of-date methods of work and to learn new methods fast.

Alexander Chubukov