The company
Unipart Rail UK Limited is the leading supplier of replacement components in the UK Traction and Rolling Stock aftermarket, managing and supplying a comprehensive range of products from major repairable components, from bogies, wheelsets and engines to consumable components such as brake pads, hoses, filters and lubricating oils.
Unipart Rail handles over 600 accredited suppliers and a product range comprising around 50,000 products held in stock at Doncaster with a daily delivery service to some 90 customer maintenance depots throughout the UK as well as regular shipments to international customers.
Background
Unipart Rail originally partnered with Syniti to ease the integration of new business. In 2001, Unipart Rail won a major contract to supply the maintenance firm for a UK train operating company. Unipart Rail became responsible for supplying all the parts required to keep the trains running.
The rolling stock was a new type for Unipart Rail. Integrating the new business involved uploading to SAP® the new maintenance contract, thousands of new master materials, new parts, thousands of new supplier relationships and the associated new accounts, accounting and control of materials.
We were stunned by the speed, efficiency and ease of use of Syniti. The timing was excellent and we used Syniti to integrate the new business we had just won."
Implementation
“We had become aware through an SAP conference, that various tools were available for uploading data to SAP,” says Chris Hall, Unipart Rail’s SAP Manager. “I contacted Syniti and found them super helpful. Within a week Syniti had visited us and run a demo in my office.”
“We were stunned by the speed, efficiency and ease of use of Syniti’s software. The timing was excellent and we used Syniti’s Data Workbench to integrate the new business we had just won,” continued Hall.
Syniti proved extremely effective for Unipart Rail, bringing savings in training and resourcing, and most vitally, a huge amount of time and cost by avoiding manual entry. Unipart Rail has since found many additional uses for Data Workbench within the business.
Results
Using Syniti has brought huge savings in training, resources and cost for Unipart Rail. Hall was also exceptionally impressed by the way in which Syniti is in touch with its customers’ needs.
“New releases of Synit’s Data Workbench bring new capabilities that are genuinely helpful to us, even improvements based on feedback we have given to Syniti,” said Hall. “A good example is the tools for managing logs. In the early days, we were uploading about 200 materials to SAP every day. This entailed the generation of horrendous log files that were difficult to use. I mentioned this…and in the next release logs were completely reworked with new tools for sorting, searching, selecting and deleting records. It is refreshing to be listened to!”
Updating Master Data for New Business
“Before Syniti, this task simply did not happen because the cost of the effort far outweighed the benefit.”
Forecasting
“We use reports to find exceptions — materials that need attention. Using Syniti’s Data Workbench, we can then tune the data in SAP allowing us to manage that exception”
Period End Finance
“With our finance team using Data Workbench to enter provisions, our reports can be on the MD’s desk two or three days after period end rather than a week after, when updating SAP was a manual task.”