To compete in a highly disruptive and rapidly evolving world companies are increasingly looking to accelerate their efforts towards digital transformation. Mumbai-based tech manufacturing startup Runaya claims to be one of the first Indian businesses to deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, a cloud-powered business management solution. Deloitte has helped Runaya with the implementation that was a part of the startup’s business transformation effort.
Naivedya Agarwal, Co-Founder, Runaya discusses the challenges the company was facing before the implementation. He says, “Before we decided to implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, there were quite a few challenges in front of us. One of the biggest issues we faced was the lack of a single source for master data and business process transactions. Data quality was another concern, as was change management.”
When evaluating potential partners for our business transformation exercise we decided to balance cost and functionality. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central aimed at SMBs, offers a fast and more reliable and secure cloud transitions. The solution offers near real time facilitation of reports, dashboards and MIS and as a SaaS solution it is easily scalable as well as allows us to optimize for cost as we are clearly able to define user control and access.
Pointing out the major parameters where Deloitte came under consideration in this deployment, Gautam Kapoor, Partner, Risk Advisory, Deloitte India, said, “The biggest challenge for most businesses including Runaya includes, wanting to adopt a completely paperless office and embrace a solution that helps them automate every process. Hence the solution needed to be customized to their need, easily adaptable, convenient for users and such that it automates most or all of the existing processes.”
For an emerging new-age startup like Runaya which is chasing an accelerated growth path, the solution had to be scalable so that it’s easy for them to further roll out the solutions for additional plants or even entities. Expanding Master Data also gets easy with all the inter module integrations intact.
The solution had to fit to their aluminum extracting production process – As the core business for Runaya is to extract Aluminum from scrap, the production process had to fit to this process without much customization so that the dross generation and aluminum recovery efficiencies are well taken care of.
What’s even more remarkable was the ‘Go Live’ was achieved within 45 days of general availability of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central in India. Kapoor says, there were many things which led to such a fast and seamless delivery at Runaya, including a highly passionate and motivated team, especially the project management team to take care of the finer aspects of the project activities, an efficient implementation partner and strong involvement of the top management, where the founder himself was involved at every stage.
One of the key performance indexes was ensuring the maximum machine availability and we were happy to find that it improved to 98% from 85% after the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Similarly, the time for the month-end closing reduced from 10-15 days to 7 days. There has been visible impact on the production efficiency as well with dross generation improving to 100% from 91% and aluminum recovery improving to 35% from 32%. Due to the deployment, the PR to PO cycle has also reduced drastically from 90 days to 15 days.
Following a successful implementation in record time, Runaya is now equipped with this high-impact product suite – putting it well ahead of the curve.
According to Kapoor, startups have to believe that the digital transformation is not an overhead for them, but it helps them make faster and data driven decisions in real time for all the domains, be it vendor selection, checking production efficiencies, monitoring high revenue generation customers etc.
Referring to the latest initiative, Kapoor says, “Digital transformations makes business processes far more effective. Moreover you get a single source of truth to rely on. And if done in a right way, the results are much exemplary and the business runs in an auto pilot mode with minimal dependencies.”
For the 2017-founded firm, looking to usher in a more digitalized and sustainable manufacturing sector in India, this is an important milestone as the company achieved operational efficiency and could bring more agility and intelligence in its processes and operations.
