A new management model for a leading automotive holding

About the company

Bulavto Holding is one of the leading automotive companies in Bulgaria with a great variety of products and services including import and dealership of cars, building equipment, spare parts, lubricants, automobile and industrial tires, bus equipment, etc. – all activities served by different companies. Having this diversity of business processes and numerous showrooms and service centers throughout the country, the management had to find an effective way to exert tight control over the whole business. Two years after implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV and the automotive add-on DealerBox, the Bulavto management has a clear view of the financial situation in the company and confidently takes tough business decisions.

The situation

Bulavto Holding has been in the Bulgarian market since 1993. During these years, the company has greatly expanded its variety of offered products and services. Currently, it is an authorized dealer and service provider of IVECO, RENAULT and DACIA; a dealer and importer of dump truck additional stories and building equipment BOBCAT; MICHELIN and a DUNLOP partner; an importer of the FINA lubricating products; the only importer of FPT industrial ship engines and electric generators; an importer of fire-fighting equipment; semitrailers MENCI; back and three side tippers CASE; an authorized dealer of Rimor campers and Maranello Kart; an authorized repairer of camping equipment DOMETIC as well as a representative of REIMO and a provider of refurbishing and transformation of SUVs into buses. The holding embeds many companies and has a big distribution network with branches in all big cities in Bulgaria.

A business with such scope requires excellent coordination, planning, reporting and control. Unfortunately, this was not the situation in Bulavto.

The main problem in the holding was the lack of real-time data integration. There was also no measurement for the service effectiveness as well as a lack of consolidated data not only on a company but also on a department level. There were a lot of difficulties administrating the price policy of some of the products and the credit limits for the customers of more than one company in the holding. It was also difficult for the employees to track the customers’ payments and the defaults. They were not able to issue reminders for defaults and could not plan the stocks in the different locations efficiently.

“Bulavto is a company with a long history. We are confident to say that it is one of the strongest companies in Bulgaria. In the last years, our business has expanded tremendously. This caused some difficulties. The sales increased which meant more stocks; a lot of new customers who needed proper customer relationship management. Having all this we found our business management system at that moment absolutely unsuitable for our business needs.”

– Nikolay Nedyalkov, Sales manager, Bulavto Holding

The solution

“Choosing an integrated software system to cover all of our specific requirements, was a lengthy and difficult process. After extensive ERP market research, we decided on Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The system attracted our attention with its easy adaptation to a particular business area and with its add-on DealerBox,  specifically designed for the automotive industry”, explains Petar Lefterov.

Bulavto chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV as it would fully cover their business needs. What’s more, the system is proven successful by its many implementations in Bulgaria and worldwide and turned out to be an excellent solution for this dynamic business.

“We tried to find not just an implementer but a reliable long-term partner. We chose Intelligent Systems Bulgaria because of their experience in the auto industry. Two years later I believe we have made the right decision”, says Peter Lefterov.

The implementation project started at the beginning of 2007. The implemented modules were the standard Finance and Accounting, Fixed Assets, Warehouse management, Sales, Purchases and additionally DealerBox Modules Car Sales, Spare Parts, Service, Time Reservation.

The implementation took around 9 months due to the complicated organizational structure of the holding and the need to embed different business processes on a single platform. One of the most difficult things was establishing unified lists of customers, vendors, items, service operations, etc. for all companies in the holding.

Benefits

“This project was a real challenge for us because of the numerous business specifics of the company. We had to customize the system in order to represent all the business processes in Bulavto Holding. I may say that we have managed to provide the most appropriate and real working solution for Bulavto which fully meets their business needs.”

– Kalin Tzvetanov, Project Manager, Intelligent Systems Bulgaria

After implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV the holding has real-time information about the cash-flows in all Profit/Cost Centers as well as in the different locations for each company. This enables the management to get an overview of the efficiency and the return of investment. Unified lists of items were established, all calculators and price lists, provided by the car vendors, have been replaced and now, all orders are placed directly in the system. Microsoft Dynamics NAV covers the full range of the activities and documents for car sales and services, which enabled Bulavto to achieve full transparency and control over the business.  A great part of the intercorporate document flow was automated which save a lot of time for the accounting personnel.

“Today, we have actual information about the costs and revenues from each direction in the whole holding, as well as for each item stock in the warehouses throughout the country. This enables us to prevent overstocking.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV and DealerBox give us a big amount of crucial information about the business which helps us with reporting and analysis and lets us make the most adequate managing decisions”, explains Petar Lefterov.

“Microsoft Dynamics NAV gives us the opportunity to release preventive activities which reduce risk and mistakes. This is really important for us as these preventive activities reflect directly on the costs. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV we managed to reduce our costs significantly”, says Nikolay Nedyalkov.