Samsung serious about offering its manufacturing expertise in Britain

Samsung’s manufacturing enterprise software arm, the $1 billion SDS Samsung organisation, which started moving into Europe last year, is turning its attention specifically to the UK and Eastern Europe, with ERP systems for SMEs – and some early success. The firm, which hitherto has served Samsung’s own massive manufacturing requirements (Samsung is a £200 billion company world-wide) in terms of systems for manufacturing and business management and supply chain management, as well as business intelligence, portals, CAD/CAM, viewers and so forth, is now pushing its services externally. It has established offices in Brentford and Budapest, and European sales director John Crosbie says its Bizentro ERP, which has been around in various iterations for some 15 years, is being well received not least “because we are a major world manufacturer so we know what we’re talking about.” He believes the “clarity” of thinking that comes from manufacturing interests that span from high tech to electronics, textiles, glass and even ship building, is what’s making the difference. “We are part of manufacturing industry, not just serving it, and people recognise that. We have a great deal of empathy with what manufacturing businesses are trying to do and how they are trying to do it.” His argument: far from having to import some industry specialists as pre-sales consultants, they have been built from the ground up from manufacturing roots. He also says that while the Samsung name is global, there are plenty of SME divisions and manufacturing units, so its Bizentro ERP system has been designed to be scalable specifically for these – only the larger Samsung plants are on SAP. Indeed, Crosbie suggests that Samsung is one of (if not the) biggest users SAP users – certainly the largest in Asia and possibly third largest in the world, with a substantial SAP implementation and management practice to draw upon. “We designed Bizentro because we needed an affordable ERP solution for our plants where SAP wasn’t appropriate to run manufacturing.” And he indicates that some of Samsung’s suppliers have also been implementing the system, so this is very much a live practice already used to dealing externally. How much of this will rub off in Europe is as yet unclear. Currently, Crosbie indicates the company is looking for partners to deliver and implement its systems using their own manufacturing systems and industry expertise. However, he says the firm will be flying over SDS personnel from Asia for initial UK project management work. Hewlett Packard has already been signed at the top level for platform and consulting, but he says, “We’re now looking for a small number of specialist VARs and consulting companies – those looking for a fresh approach to ERP. We’re in advanced talks.” Manufacturers that will find the system itself useful include those with distribution, retail and, loosely, process sector aspects that can benefit from its plastics moulding and textiles and apparel coverage.