Name: KARTIK SHARMAPRN: 14030141085Assignment on Coir Industry

Submitted By:KARTIK SHARMA14030141085Kurl-onBackground

Kurlon Limited, a Manipal Group Company came into existence in 1962. The Company was then called Karnataka Consumer Products Ltd and on the 8th of December, 1995 the company was renamed as Kurlon Limited.Kurlon is part of the 2,000 crore Manipal Group of Companies founded by the Pais of Manipal which is a major financial and industrial group in India. The group has its activities spread over financial services, manufacturing, education, electronic commerce, software services, share booking, etc. The group is headed by Mr. Sudhakar Pai who is the Chairman of the group. Mr. Pai is on the board of several well-known industrial, commercial and educational enterprises. Kurlon was conceived when Mr. Pai was in Germany in 1962. He found that car seat cushions were manufactured of rubberized coir. The manufacturer was importing curled coir from Sri Lanka. In India, the coir industry has developed very well, mostly in Kerala where they produce Retted Fiber. Green husks of coconut are immersed in the salty backwards for 10 to 12 months and the retted husk is supplied to various homes to make Mats and Matting rolls after producing the yam from this fiber. This has created employment to many women in the state. Austrian technology was available to extract fiber from the dried coconut husk and curl it into ropes and keep it in that state for minimum 3 months. When uncurled, they become tiny springs. The cars manufactured in India in 60s were very few in numbers. It was uneconomical to start the molded product out of the rubberized coir to manufacture car seat cushions. After a lot of experiments and quality control steps, Mr.Ramesh Pai thought of entering into Rubberized coir mattress manufacturing. Thus Kurlon was born, become one of the popular mattresses providing restful sleep to millions of Indian consumers.Today, Kurlon has created direct employment to over 1000 people and indirect employment to lakhs of coir workers across the sub-continent. Kurlons success is built on a solid infrastructure and its powerful marketing strength. The Company has 44 sales offices, which are profit centers, strategically located all over the country. All the centers are working on trade terms. The Company products are exported to West Asia viz; U.A.E., Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, UK, Europe, South and East of Africa, Indian Ocean rim, SAARC, South East and Far East Countries. Kurlon Ltd. is the brand leader in the industry and has acquired major market share in the branded mattresses segment. Taking advantage of the market potential, Kurlon strongly believes in giving the customers quality products of a wide range at competitive prices, which will result in customer satisfaction.

What was the case for IT strategy?

Kurlon always had home-grown ERP application, which had no standardization. The company was relying on historical data to forecast demand for the raw materials, which was a time-consuming task and prone to errors. Moreover, inter-category product profitability could not be determined, as much of the data was not even available.It took about 6-8 months for the company to select the ERP solution. SAPs time tested processes and systems and the availability of the industry best practices, made mySAP an easy choice for Kurlon to enable operational efficiencies in its core business.The purpose of deploying mySAP ERP was: To cope with business dynamics and facilitate exploring of diverse business opportunities in the domestic and the global markets as well. To help the company realize its strategic objectives. To enable integration of multiple functions, achieve standardization and gain business intelligence across our various locations.How it was implemented?

This strategy was implemented by introducing an integrated online information system, Industry Best Practices and an enriched Decision Support System.The ERP solution was implemented across six locations by Unisoft Infotech, and was completed at a record time of three months. The first phase of the implementation addressed supply and distribution, financial accounting (FICO) and material management (MM), and the second phase catered to production and planning (PP), plant management (PM) and quality management (QM).USPs of IT Strategy

mySAP business suite solutions help the company in improving: customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration, and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations.Key Outcomes of the IT Strategy

Kurlon, today, has evolved into a company which offers mattresses in 126 different configurations and exports its products to the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain in the Middle East, to all SAARC countries as well as the markets of South East Asia and the Far East.In India it has a dominating market leadership; research has suggested that the brand enjoys a top-of-mind awareness of a staggering 80%. Everything else being equal, this would mean that in a future purchase Kurlon would be in the consideration set of at least 80% of all customers, giving the company an extraordinary edge over other brands. For its fine achievements, awards have been quick in coming. The Coir Board of India has honored Kurlon with many citations over the years. For the past 15 years it has won the Coir Board of India's awards for Outstanding Performance in Export of Rubberised Coir Products, Development of the Domestic Market for Rubberised Coir, Best Export Performance at the State Level and the award for being the Largest Domestic Trader of Coir and Coir Products.With a countrywide dealer network of 5000, Kurlon provides direct employment to over 1000 people and indirect employment to hundreds of thousands of coir workers across the sub-continent.Suggested IT Strategy V2.0 for the Company

New technologies, such as the automated system that National Coir Research Management Institute (NCRMI) has introduced, can help resolve issues with production and quality that must be addressed to make Kurlon competitive in the global market. This system enables automated identification and characterization of the micro organisms as the current technology used for the purpose is time consuming and laborious.