By Espie Angelica A. de Leon
After making history in 2017 when Tanduay climbed to the top of global rankings and overtook Bacardi as the best-selling rhum in the world, Tanduay Distillers notched another milestone as it partnered with software titan SAP to help drive further global success and put the company on track toward digital transformation.
The internationally renowned Filipino liquor brand will deploy SAP S/4 HANA in all of its three plants and expects to go live by the third quarter of 2019, company officials announced during a media tour of its 17.5-hectare Cabuyao, Laguna facility in November 7.
Tanduay Distillers senior vice president for finance and chief finance officer Nestor Mendones said the company acquired most of the modules under SAP. Among these were materials management, production planning, warehouse management, sales and distribution, enterprise asset management, financial, and controlling modules.
Mendones claimed that SAP will make their accounting process smoother and more efficient. It will also allow them to produce financial reports anytime and anywhere and access these reports and financial assets easily.
SAP will help ensure they have adequate quantities of materials in the supply chain to prevent shortages or gaps and make sure that procurement of goods is done in a timely and cost-effective manner.
SAP will also map the beverage company?s sales and distribution processes, help optimize pricing schemes, shipping, billing, tax accounting, and transportation planning, among others.
Overall, the enterprise application software will free Tanduay?s employees from manual tasks which consume a lot of time and allow them instead to devote more time to the more productive aspects of their jobs.
?The data that is in the purchase requisition is re-encoded into the purchase order, re-encoded again in the receiving report, re-encoded again into the voucher. So in a single process, we have to input the same data four times,? Mendones explained, citing the procedure for purchase requisition as an example. ?Under the SAP, there will be only two documents left ?- the cheque at the end of the process and the purchase requisition at the start of the process.?
Tanduay, a member of the LT Group of Companies, is targeting for its SAP-run operations to debut in the first quarter of 2019 in its Cabuyao facility, followed by its 22-hectare Negros Occidental plant in the second quarter and then the Cagayan de Oro site by the third quarter.
The company produces an average of almost 22 million cases of beverage across all three plants annually.
?In the Philippines, we look forward to fully supporting industry icons such as Tanduay whose vision to become intelligent enterprises will enable them to succeed in the Philippines and around the world,? said SAP Philippines managing director Edler Panlilio.
According to Mendones, the company undertook just a few customizations to implement SAP as the software is already adaptable to several industries including airlines and service, unlike other software which merely cater to manufacturing.
The media tour of Tanduay?s Laguna plant was part of the SAP Asia Pacific Media Event held on the same day dubbed ?Powering Customer Success in Asia.?
