International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) has joined forces with Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corp (MMPC) to aid the car maker’s shift from its current IBM’s AS/400 platform to the latest vehicle management system on SAP S/4HANA.
IBM’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, S/4HANA, was implemented by IBM Consulting, following migration from the AS/400 platform. The vehicle management system deployed by IBM reportedly consists of financial, logistics and vehicle sales operations.
The SAP S/4HANA implementation also marks MMPC’s first steps on its journey to the cloud. This modernization effort to transfer the car manufacturer’s legacy applications from on-premises to the cloud aims to help simplify internal processes resulting in operational efficiencies.
The deployment has brought substantial changes in terms of operational processes and vehicle supply chain. It has also reportedly provided a centralised view of business operations, with end-to-end visibility of vehicle data from production to end customer. Simultaneously, it has helped compliance with regulatory reporting requirements.
Additionally, the system’s unified financial and management accounting capabilities have helped to lower the car maker’s manual finance operations, which may lead to lower operational costs.
Aileen Judan-Jiao, President and Country General Manager of IBM Philippines cited the challenges posed by the current pandemic in their SAP implementation:. “MMPC is an industry beacon in executing change management and digital transformation during the pandemic, through the best use of technology that optimises cost and improves efficiency. Transitioning to a new system during enhanced community quarantine was fraught with challenges and IBM was privileged to have the trust and confidence of MMPC that we would get the job done. And we did. The system migration and implementation has equipped MMPC with the ability to analyse data needed for enterprise resource planning and production to gain economies of scale.”
