Vishnu K. Mahmud

Vishnu K. Mahmud
Contributor
Jakarta
vmahmud@yahoo.com

Aryana Haribawa was given a challenge: create a piece of software
so everyone can go home by 5 p.m. It wasn't going to be easy. But
as IT director for Lowe Indonesia, one of the premier advertising
agencies in the country, he had to develop a centralized system
to consolidate and manage data from the company's various
multimillion dollar accounts.

"The old system was a combination of a multitude of small
applications. Things had to be faxed, signed off, entered into a
spreadsheet, double-checked and finally processed," said Aryana.

Many businesses in Jakarta use similar systems. Instead of an
all-encompassing computer application to enter data and
information per project, they usually open individual
spreadsheets or word processing files and manually copy the
numbers -- linking them to the separate project folders in their
own unique ways. To find out the total costs or profits for a
particular assignment, it would usually take hours while the
accounting staff crunched the numbers and merged the data.

What Lowe Indonesia (www.lowe.co.id) wanted was a highly
customized Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that
streamlined much of their business processes to provide efficient
and accurate information sharing, from creative services to
account management, from finance to human resources. In addition,
the solution had to be user-friendly to allow the highly
resourceful employees to utilize the system effectively for the
company's benefit.

After trying off-the-shelf ERP products that covered limited
aspects of the business, which were also difficult to customize,
Lowe Indonesia decided to make their own system. Armed with
Microsoft Visual Studio, Aryana and his team planned, developed
and eventually deployed LIONS (Lowe Initiative Media Online
System).

From budgeting project costs to maintaining client
relationships, the system speeds up day-to-day operations.
Accessible by the account management, traffic, production, media
and finance departments, LIONS helps ensure the overall data is
accurate and updated in real time.

Speeding up project reporting cuts down on both time and
paperwork, allowing account managers to have real-time, on-line
budget control. In addition, it permits management to see the
effectiveness of their sales team by closely monitoring the
profit and loss (P&L) statements of each account manager, as well
as the progression of their account development and costs.

What Lowe did, says Adrian Wicaksono, account manager at
Microsoft Indonesia, is something that other companies should
consider in automating their business processes.

"The LIONS solution fits them perfectly. What Lowe Indonesia
developed is a true industrial-strength ERP system that is
scalable and fully integrated end-to-end with their other
systems," he says. "And it's easier to find people who know how
to program in Visual Basic or C. In the future, with the
Microsoft .NET framework, they can migrate them to web services
easily."

"With our custom-made LIONS solution," says Aryana, "the
lengthy waiting period for an account budget status is chopped to
five seconds. Everything is online, real-time, on budget and on-
time, allowing us to actually go home at 5 p.m."

What's more, developing LIONS came at a significant cost
savings compared to purchasing off-the-shelf software. By
creating the solution in-house with proven technology, Lowe
Indonesia has the power in the future to add additional modules
and make immediate software tweaks to allow their corporate teams
to plan advertising campaigns more effectively.

In addition, this homemade customizable solution allows
suppliers and clients to preview selected information securely
via the internet, allowing them to keep up to date, anywhere,
anytime.

Aryana is looking forward to integrating his LIONS solution
with clients and media vendors such as television stations. "With
this system, we hope to integrate it with our partners' systems
to enhance productivity. With technological developments such as
Microsoft's .NET technology, it will enable our different systems
to talk to each other and share data. This way, everyone can work
more efficiently."

Even with different computer systems and database
applications, with the .NET framework the data in the finance
departments of both companies would be able talk to each other,
cutting down the time to process and approve purchase orders and
payments.

Very few companies have the courage to create and champion
ideas that add magic to their list of services. By recognizing
that information technology has a strategic value for their
business, Lowe Indonesia's homegrown ERP system is proof that
properly planned investments in IT will reap future dividends by
speeding up projects and lowering overall costs.

In addition, the IT department has the potential of being a
profit center as LIONS can be licensed to other Lowe offices
worldwide. With its object-oriented programming, each module can
be individually customized to meet each office's requirements
such as tax rates, agency commission and media vendor expenses.

"We are perhaps the only advertising company in the world that
has a solution like this," Aryana said. "Hopefully with this
system, we can maintain our LIONS share of the market."