Business Situation
Axalta Coating Systems is a company specializing in the production and sale of liquid and powder coatings. Its products are mainly used in light and commercial vehicle manufacturing, the automotive repair aftermarket and a wide range of industrial applications. Due to the sustained growth of its business in recent years, the company’s Asia-Pacific division was facing enormous challenges with its internal price change approval process, due to the different system requirements of its various branches. The approval process was very complex and in urgent need of an integrated system to replace the existing method for logging the initiation and approval of price changes throughout the entire Asia-Pacific region."With the previous ERP system, a combination of emails and manual operations were needed to approve price changes, which took an average of 1–2 weeks. This resulted in an error-prone, more complex and less accurate process. The APAS system that was custom developed for us by Avanade is able to meet our current requirements for a more digital workplace, improving overall productivity and data accuracy, while also providing our customers with a more flexible and convenient user experience."
Solution
Following extensive, long-term research and collaboration with Axalta Coating Systems Asia Pacific in six countries, Avanade custom built the Axalta Price Approval System (APAS), an all-new, intelligent pricing approval system based on Microsoft SharePoint 2013. As a result, Axalta Coating Systems Asia Pacific’s marketing professionals in each locality can now log into the system through various mobile devices allowing for real-time price change requests. They also have access to a fully operational mobile office that is greatly reducing approval times and procedures and ultimately speeding up the business.Results
The intelligent pricing approval systems – APAS – that Avanade built provided numerous business benefits for Axalta Coating Systems:- Greatly reduced the complexity of the price change and approval process
- Increased data accuracy
- Improved productivity
- Reduced overall costs by 30%
- Moved the company a step closer towards the goal of a comprehensive digital workplace