Leveraging Technology to Navigate a Complex ERP Landscape and Drive Working Capital Impact

Challenges

Two lines of business: Service Marine Parts & Accessories (Land ‘N’ Sea), and Engines.

Land ‘N’ Sea distributes marine parts and accessories to over 18,000 global customers through the US, Canada, and Latin America with 1,800 customers added yearly. Their Credit Management was driven primarily by spreadsheets and emails.

Multiple ERP systems across a global IT landscape and diverse business units

Mercury Marine has operations in US, Canada, and Latin America. In addition to working in multiple regions, they had four disparate ERPs for storing customer details: Land ‘N’ Sea, Attwood, Garelick, and Mercury Marine. These business units had common customers. The existing systems were antiquated, inefficient, and incapable of interface. Between these businesses, they had an inconsistent credit approach which led to increased complexity.

Complex Credit Management scenario

1. Multiple external data sources:

Data had to be manually pulled from different credit agencies, including Experian and Equifax. Public financials or credit insurance companies like Yahoo Finance were not considered.

2. Time-consuming data entry, leaving no for strategic decision making:

The entire process relied on spreadsheets, faxes, and email chasing.

Data had to be entered twice, once on a spreadsheet and then again on the ERP.

3. Disconnected ERP systems creating siloed A/R processes:

Since different business units had different ERPs and some of these units had common customers, this led to dealing with multiple ERPs for retrieving and updating customer data.

Handling New Customer Applications and Existing Customer Reviews

A credit analysts’ nightmare – managing credit data across multiple ERP systems

Mercury Machine had multiple business units, and it was likely that there were common customers across businesses. If a customer worked with Garelick, Mercury Marine, and Attwood, then to manage the credit risk, the credit analysts needed to manually look at the customer information present in four different ERPs.

The credit teams were needed a strategy that helped them connect information across multiple ERP systems to provide unprecedented visibility, so that credit risk is reduced and the credit risk monitoring process is improved.