Sapna Book House (SBH), one of the leading book houses in Karnataka, offers books right from general reading, management, sciences to children's books. Reportedly,they have the largest collection of Kannada literature. Besides Sapna is a leading publisher of English and Kannada books in India, with over 2300 titles by reputed authors to credit.

The company uses technology to manage their core processes efficiently. They presently use Logic Soft's ERP solution - Logisoft, customised for their business operations that helps them better manage their stock.

Deepak Shah, director, Sapna Book House, said "We were one of the early adopters of technology, even when we had not opened other branches in the city. We knew that the business process would be much easier with the help of IT and that its going to get better with time. Our first computer was an HCL one. Four years down from then, we built a complete database and got an expert to manage the systems for us. Foxpro4 was the application then used. In October 1998, Logic Soft started developing an application especially for us to support our process. In 1999 our first branch was opened and Logisoft was implemented.

Customising the software

Before deploying Logisoft, SBH was computerised for billing purposes but not inventory control. Logic Soft Pvt. Ltd. (LSPL) could understand the requirement of SBH fast since it had been providing solutions to book trade since 1986. Within a matter of few months from the date of order confirmation, the system was taken online. Since SBH had huge stocks it was impractical to close down the shop for stock taking. A unique method was worked out to ensure that the system was online and also simultaneously took stock entries. It took a few months to be able to capture the physical stocks into the system. Since then SBH has not looked back and holds accurate stocks in the system.

SBH started with English books first and then computerised the Kannada books Section
and Greeting Cards, Stationery, Gifts, Toys, and Music etc followed this. From day one, the source barcode (the barcode present on the item) scanning was enabled, which reduced a lot of effort since most of the foreign books had the barcode. The barcode generation for non-barcode items was also enabled, drastically reducing the customer check out time by enabling more bills to be raised within the same timeframe.

Rajgopal, director, Logic Soft, observes, "We have been associated with Sapna Book House (SBH) for more than 10 years now. We made a customised software for them in their initial days and have since then been productively associated with them. Upgrades happen quite often and they always get back to us with issues they need to address through technology. This helps us grow as developers and them as smart IT users."

Increased business eficiency

According to SBH, post the Logisoft deployment, th company has found tremendous improvement in their business processes. Product identification accuracy has increased and accurate query handling had led to greater customer satisfaction. Over stocking has reduced because of timely inventory ageing reports generated by the system.

Analysis of a purchase bill helped in understanding whether the items supplied by the supplier actually got sold by the time the bill became due. Purchase returns could be given to the supplier at the actual purchase costs. This was not happening earlier since it was difficult to remember at what discount the item was bought and what was the conversion rate at that point of time.

The computerisation also led to accurate returns and tracking of credit notes. Sales returns from customers are taken back at the exact rate at which the items are sold.

Remote connectivity solution

When SBH decided to open their second outlet in Bangalore the obvious choice was to start the computerisation from the very day. It was decided that the master information and the stocks would move from HO. Software upgradations were done to ensure that the master data replication happens automatically and the stock updates also happen automatically when stocks are transferred. This enhancement enabled the satellite shop to focus on sales rather than on item creation / stock inward entries.

A major software update was done which enabled both the branches to view stock of a given book / item at the other branch. This immensely helped in providing better service to customers and identifying stock outs of core items at HO. Remote connectivity solutions were provided by LSPL to enable an executive in one shop to connect to another shop and work online. Promoters / Mangers could pull out reports of any shop sitting remotely anywhere in the world. Subsequently SBH has opened 2 more outlets in Bangalore and 1 in Mysore.

Smart Investments

Sapna Book House today has learnt how to manage its IT infrastructure without major additional investments. "For a medium business like ours, investing our resources smartly is very important," comments Shah.

Sapna invests around 7 to 8 lakhs annually on its IT infrastructure. In the last 3 years, Spana has invested 4 Lakhs on its servers and in every 6 to 7 months replaces 22 old computers with new ones. Presently, the organisation uses 100 MB hub from Airtel and plans to upgrade it to a 1GB hub by May-June next year. Sapna also plans on deploying the Radio Frequency based bar code and estimates a Rs 40-lakh initial investment for the same soon.

'Data security is a key issue to any business and we have addressed this issue as well; LSPL and SBH are in discussion to port this existing system to a GUI platform," added Rajgopal.