Total Oil Türkiye Success Story

Total, Having Created a Highly Operationally Efficient Ecosystem with Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision), Also Keeps the System Up to Date by Continuously Improving It.

Wanting to reorganize the structure of its dealers and move them onto a common accounting system, Total used Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) to standardize business processes between the company and its dealers, helping to build a strong ecosystem while increasing operational efficiency. Able to easily incorporate requests from distributors and users into the system, Total reviewed the system together with Pargesoft, its Microsoft Dynamics NAV partner, as part of a version upgrade effort. Thanks to the improved system, high user satisfaction was achieved on both the dealer and head office sides.

Situation

Total Oil Türkiye A.Ş., established under the international energy giant Total Group, has operated as a single fuel, lubricant, and LPG company since 2002, when the companies operating in Turkey under the Total and Elf names since 1992 merged and Totalgaz was incorporated into the group. Total, an international technology giant, markets more than 1,170,000 tons of product annually across 140 countries, including Turkey.

Total Oil Türkiye A.Ş. operates a lubricant plant in Menemen with a production capacity of 30,000 tons, alongside storage and distribution facilities established in Haramidere (Istanbul), Gebze (Kocaeli), Aliağa (Izmir), Menemen, and Samsun. In addition, the group’s Totalgaz company operates in the LPG sector with nearly 350 auto-gas sales points, more than 1,000 main and sub-dealers for cylinder gas, and LPG by-products. At the beginning of 2005, Total transitioned to a distributor structure with 14 exclusive dealers serving 20 separate locations across Turkey, and wanted to reorganize its dealer structure and bring it under a unified accounting system, requiring an ERP solution that would meet these needs. Its dealers’ infrastructures were not sufficient to work together on many fronts, particularly in electronic environments. Each dealer having a different accounting infrastructure made data consolidation at headquarters impossible. Total wanted to bring its distribution network under control and benefit from the other significant advantages that centralized management would bring.

Solution

After evaluating the options available on the market, Total began considering Microsoft Dynamics NAV for the solution it was looking for. The features that made NAV stand out were its suitability for Total’s dealer structure and the ability of the database solution they used to communicate with certain elements of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The specific customer and product segmentations tracked in the existing database could also be used more in depth by dealers through the dimensions available in the Navision environment.

Easy adaptability to mobile use with portable devices was another reason for the choice. The project began with a pilot dealer, and all sales, purchasing, and accounting business processes were analyzed. Once the model was created and the structure finalized, this same model was applied to the other 13 dealers. When dealers had special requests, certain points were excluded from the scope. Once these special requests were approved by Total, various operations were carried out to customize the application. During this process, segmentation work was carried out among the dealers to determine which dealer was performing better or worse in which segment, and weak points began to be addressed.

Dealers’ business processes and the segmentation they had carried out themselves were reviewed, and errors related to segmentation and customer profiles were corrected. A flexible, real-time accessible analysis environment was created using OLAP cubes. Managers and relevant staff were enabled to instantly view, through various dimensional analyses, how each dealer was performing in a given period and for a given product. In this way, Microsoft Dynamics NAV was also structured as a decision-support system for Total in terms of sales, marketing, and dealer relations.

The ease of use of Microsoft Dynamics NAV and its familiar Microsoft screens and menus enabled users at the dealers to adapt to the system quickly. With the rapid adaptation shown by users in defining stock cards and transactions, accurate and reliable information began accumulating at headquarters from day one.

Benefits

A Clearer Dealer Profile, a Single Ecosystem

Operational Efficiency. As with all companies that have a distribution structure, if the parent company, dealers, and end customers cannot be brought together into a single ecosystem, serious disconnects can occur. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV, all parties in the distribution network were brought together into a single ecosystem and achieved a much closer relationship. As a result, Total can now keep a much better pulse on both its end customers and its dealers. This allows Total to guide its dealers more effectively and contribute directly to their success. Fed by real-time data and with all relationships moved into an electronic environment, this ecosystem also makes operations more efficient. Total executives emphasize that Microsoft Dynamics NAV does not just provide an IT infrastructure, but is a model that enables better tracking of accounting, better analysis of products, more accurate assessment of customer and profitability situations, and reflects all the perspectives a commercial organization needs.

High Manageability Through Common Standards

In the past, Total’s dealers had differently structured accounting systems and different ways of doing business, which made it a major challenge to get dealers speaking the same accounting language and to consolidate all reports. The ecosystem provided by Microsoft Dynamics NAV enabled all 14 dealers to use the same system and established standards for customer and product segmentation, accounting, sales, and the structuring of financial statements. Because this structure also gave Total the ability to perform accurate analysis, dealer operations became more manageable. With reporting that enables dealers and headquarters to speak a common language, everyone now refers to the same segmentation.

Since customer type, product, and product category are defined by headquarters, both dealers and headquarters draw the same meaning from sales reports. Some of the confusion that used to occur has now disappeared. Certain errors made by dealers can also be caught more easily thanks to shared reporting. When a figure outside the usual trend is observed for a particular product or product group due to a data entry error, the data entry is queried and the error is corrected immediately.

Support for Strategic Decisions

Today, Total’s executives can obtain any type of analysis or report from the system in real time using Microsoft Dynamics NAV. How a given dealer performed in a given period for a given product can be instantly displayed through various dimensional analyses. For this reason, Microsoft Dynamics NAV has become an important part of the decision-support system for Total’s strategic decision-making points such as sales, marketing, and distributor relations.

Easy Adaptation to Emerging New Needs

With Microsoft Dynamics NAV, needs that arise over time can be easily accommodated. For example, when a distributorship system emerged in fuel distribution, the system was built on top of Microsoft Dynamics NAV and fuel dealers were also incorporated into the same system. Likewise, certain requirements arising from different campaigns were easily introduced into the system.

The adaptations needed to make the system easy for users and to help them carry out their work quickly and comfortably could be rapidly introduced and put into use. As a result, high user satisfaction has been achieved. Nur Kulaoğlu also emphasizes the importance of the business partner in this regard: “Alongside the technological infrastructure of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Pargesoft’s experience was also very influential in helping us tailor the system to our needs to this extent. The experience, product knowledge, and approach of Pargesoft’s managers and consultants, along with their ability to correctly understand our needs and quickly produce solutions, were highly effective in the success of our version upgrade and review project. We stayed within our targets in terms of both budget and time, and also achieved high user satisfaction.”

Ease of Use

Microsoft Dynamics NAV has a user-friendly structure. It also offers interfaces that feel very familiar to users accustomed to other Microsoft products. As a result, even dealer-side users without strong computer or accounting knowledge were able to adapt to the system easily after a short training session.