SIGE and GXplorer in Chile

As a part of its strategy for regional growth, last January Fanapel acquired the majority of the shares (66%) of Suministros Gráficos, a Chilean paper distributor. Rodolfo Bruni, Fanapel's Systems Manager, said that Suministros Gráficos was part of a holding that used SAP, and that handling the management of Suministros Gráficos did not justify the costs, and that that led them to start looking for other ERPs.

Fanapel is a public corporation founded in 1898 and listed on the Montevideo Stock Exchange. Its range of activities encompasses eucalyptus forestry, cellulose production, paper production for printing and writing, production of packing paper and paper for notebooks, envelopes, folders, etc., and calcium carbonate production. The company assets are valued in US$142.5 million and it has total sales of US$62.1 million.
Bruni explained that in seeking an ERP for handling Suministros Gráficos, Fanapel decided on Sistemas Integrales de Gestión Empresarial (SIGE), Concepto's solution developed with GeneXus. Two of the major aspects  taken into consideration when making this decision were costs and all of GeneXus' rewards.

The migration from SAP to SIGE was accomplished from May to September this year, a period of time that was necessary for the  implementation and customization of the application to the Chilean legislation.
Bruni also mentioned that in those four months, most of the work was distance-work, with remote access; it was only necessary to have the physical presence of one person from Concepto in Chile, Andrea Etchart, who stayed there for a month in order to train staff at Suministros Gráficos and put the solution into production.
SIGE handles the sales cycle, purchasing, storage, payroll, and distribution of Suministros Gráficos, which receives from 200 to 250 orders on a daily basis. Moreover, it includes a Datawarehousing module that uses GXplorer -integrated to SIGE - in order to carry out queries on purchases and sales. "We had installed some queries; they asked us for some more and they had them working in just two minutes," said Álvaro Decaux, Project Leader, from Concepto. SIGE has 40 users at Suministros Gráficos, and more than a half of them are salespeople, some of which access the tool remotely.

Decaux said that more than a software installation, this was like setting up a company. As a matter of fact, finance, purchasing, human resources and accounting were new areas within Suministros Gráficos. Prior to the acquisition, these areas were handled from other companies that made up the holding.
Finally, Bruni added that Fanapel has worked with GeneXus since 1993, and that nowadays almost 100% of its applications have been developed with this tool. With the incorporation of GeneXus, the company is seeking to decrease development times in view of the growth expectations that the company had. Fanapel actually tripled production, and without GeneXus, it would not have been possible to match the change pace.