Cannon Group select Navision

Microsoft Business Solutions supplies integrated software solution to Cannon Group

Cannon Group traces its humble origins back to the early 1900s from the village of Milton near Abingdon in Oxfordshire.

Separate businesses were amalgamated under the group mantle in the mid 1990s and Cannon sees obvious synergies between them.

Its automotive parts operation, which packs for companies such as MG Rover Limited, is well-known in the automotive arena and ships parts not involved in the main assembly process.

Finance Director Ian Doye explains: "If a company manufactures automotive parts, it either goes on a production line or on the shelf as a part to be sold.

Cannon provides the packing debug." A fleet operation, which spans the UK, includes major outsourced contract transport for companies such as Bison Concrete Products Limited, whose pre-stressed concrete holds up many of the country's new football stadia, including the Millennium stadium.

A warehousing and distribution unit, meanwhile, which operates from its 9,400m/sq head office premises with another 4000m/sq operated on behalf of Baumatic Limited a leading white goods manufacturer based in Reading and 4,700m/sq Leeds warehouse which serves clients such as Total UK.

Because of the way it had built the business, it did not want to change the client-centric approach of its automotive parts, fleet and warehousing operations.

But at the same time, it desperately needed to stay competitive in order to be able to add value to the customer in the first place.

Doye says: "We have a resource such as a truck and it has to travel as short a distance as possible, with the most weight and make the most drops in the shortest amount of time.

The profit driver is getting the highest efficiency and utilisation out of our resources.

We're not working on big margins here." Cannon had previously gone so far as to develop systems specifically for individual customers.

But this approach had become untenable.

It chose Microsoft Business Solutions Navision because it considered it the only system to be able to replicate the approach in a standardised environment.

It added to this the Commerce Gateway; using Microsoft BizTalk Server to bring in EDI orders from customers delivered over the Internet.

Cannon was one of Navision's first customers in the UK in 1996 on version 1.1.

It was originally used for financials only.

But that changed when Cannon was introduced to Solution Centre partner Metaphorix, initially to help it with an upgrade in August/September of last year.

"We didn't do a lot more with it until Metaphorix became involved," admits Doye.

"We didn't use it to its full potential." The system has since grown from just financials to encompass warehousing and distribution and also includes Commerce Gateway for bringing in EDI messages from customers.

It replaces an in-house system developed with Compsoft's application development and data management tools.

The internally developed applications dated from the earliest days of PC computing.

"We've now moved away from in-house development so that now 80% is a developed product and we just bespoke the last 20pc to our own requirements," says Doye.

While the product is only currently used in the distribution and warehousing operation, the company is anticipating a rollout in its packing division in the next 1-3 years.

The advantage of bringing the system together on a packaged application is that it has forced a rationalisation.

"What we had prior to Microsoft Navision were lots of standalone systems - a location system, stock system, distribution system, planning system and accounts separate to that.

One of the reasons we wanted to use Microsoft Navision to bring it all together was that in an ideal world we wanted everything joined up.

And everything we've done so far has been.

Any integration issues we've had have not been with the technology but with the business." Despite the obvious synergies, within Cannon's three separate divisions the individual operations perform distinct tasks.

"It would not do for us to say here's a standard service now buy it'.

We ask our customers about their individual needs, so our product is tailored to their individual requirements." Cannon was desperate to retain this tailoring to clients and considered Microsoft Navision to be the only product on the market capable of delivering such flexibility.

Microsoft Navision's development environment, C/SIDE, built around its RDBMS database, comes with the product and both Solution Centres and end customers are encouraged to tailor it to their needs.

"What we have now is a platform that can take us forward," says Doye.

"Part of the reason we chose Microsoft Navision is that in the longer term we still want to do programming ourselves so we can be responsive to customer needs.

This was the only product on the market that we could do that with.

No other product gives you the same potential.

From a strategic point of view, going forward, that is all-important.

"One of the strengths in having a customer-focused system is when the customer phones up with a problem, you can hopefully solve it immediately.

In a normal reseller/customer environment it can take weeks.

With Microsoft Navision you can easily build specific functionality - it's totally responsive, so we won't lose our competitive advantage." Working with Metaphorix, Cannon has managed to retain the customer specialisations that are required while building them onto a base of common functionality.

It has also connected the disparate systems.

Having a common set of functionality will help in the future, Doye says: "It's given us a set of business processes to base our work on going forward.

When we were developing our own product everybody got everything they wanted.

When you standardise, you say that person wants this and this person wants that and you give them something they are all happy with." Many of Cannon's customers send EDI order information.

Metaphorix has amended the Commerce Gateway so, through Microsoft's BizTalk Server integration product, it can accept the huge volume of orders.

Having this automatically feeding into the back-end system means taking on new clients is far easier.

"Because of the way we have implemented the commerce gateway, there are a variety of maps that support a variety of information," says Doye.

"Between all of these we get most of the problems any customer could want solving by standardising the end result within the system.

There are usually cost and time implications in taking on a new EDI relationship.

But we can take on a new client instantly, without having to go through a major planning process." The need for EDI support means the system has to be incredibly reliable -orders come in throughout the day so if it were to go down, Cannon would be hamstrung.

Orders that come in over the Internet are sorted based on delivery performance criteria, the system organises the picks in the warehouse, ships product containers, then publishes order delivery status, stock information, warehouse information and ultimately proof of delivery on the Web.

The use of the Web has in turn reduced admin further.

"We can do things better and smarter and spend time on other things that matter.

Instead of taking numerous calls per day asking where an order is, we take one call if there is a real problem and we can deal with it." However, perhaps the greatest benefit the system has brought is in having real-time access to essential information that can help.

"This business is about very tight margins," he says.

"Otherwise people would do it themselves.

We need to create a value add for the customer.

If there is a fleet of vehicles under utilised, you will not make money on the distribution." Cannon already does a great deal of regular reporting on its performance metrics - revenue and cost, client, vehicle, region, type and transaction.

Its 99% plus on-time delivery it puts partly down to the new system.

But it also looks at deeper analysis such as taking drops, weight, value, tickets and postcode region and comparing it by product category, by vehicle or by company.

Standard reporting has become easier because it can cut and paste directly from Microsoft Navision views to produce one-off reports.

More in-depth analysis is conducted off-line in Microsoft Sql Server with separate tools, but having more up-to-date and accurate information has helped the company become more real time about its analysis.

"Rather than doing a big analysis exercise, we take information out on a daily basis and can tweak things to do any changes.

There are reasons why we run vehicles in certain ways.

Profiles develop, regions, data profiles, and these are built up over time.

And what we've found is we tend to do a big analysis process.

Now we can do that analysis on a day-to-day basis." For a 20m pound plus turnover private company, such analysis may prove essential in an increasingly competitive arena, but Cannon has also found it can make information available to clients who are using big-name ERP systems but cannot get the information they require.

"Our clients come to us for information about their orders.

And we do extracts to give them reports." Now that is added value.

Doye concludes: "We now have the visibility and agility to react in a dynamic way to the changing demands of our business and customers.".

Back to top