Sonic Biochem Extractions Limited manufactures and exports its soya products to more than 32 countries. The company has three manufacturing plants. Two plants are established near Indore and another one near Ratlam. The soya based products which the company is manufacturing are consumed by various industries starting from food to health and pharmaceuticals and animal feed. Sonic Biochem has made distinguished progress in the field of manufacturing new generation soya products.

With the escalating size of the business as well as the workforce, the company felt the need to centralise its business processes and systems. Sonic Biochem has implemented Oracle Database, Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Application Express.

Old system not up to the mark

Sonic Biochem was earlier using COBOL in Unix. However, the system was inefficient in handling the growing business needs. The database performance was not up to the mark. Sometimes the system was not able to provide accurate data and hence continuous error and failure was a regular exercise at Sonic Biochem. The top level executives were also unable to take prompt decisions.

“There was a pure need for a database management system that would be rugged and scalable in nature. We were in search of a solution which could provide us much more beyond monitoring and reporting by providing strong management solutions," states Kamal Mata, manager IT, Sonic Biochem Extractions Limited.

Migrating to Oracle Database Management

The company started hunting for a database management solution that required low IT maintenance and was within their budget. The database solution from vendors like Microsoft's SQL Server and MySQL were evaluated, before Sonic Biochem gave Oracle the thumbs-up.

According to Mata, “We decided to go with Oracle as its solutions are robust and cost effective. We have used Visual Basic at the front end and Oracle at the back end. We have migrated the whole COBOL based applications to Oracle based applications. We are using Oracle solutions in 10 modules and have taken 50 licenses from Oracle.”

The company has deployed Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g and Oracle Application Manager in its inventory management, invoicing, financial management, MIS, procurement, production and planning and some parts of payroll departments. The total cost involved in the software licensing was Rs 2.5 lakh and the deployment took around a year's time.

Data access increased by upto 50%

The deployment has enabled the top level executives to efficiently monitor the progress of the business operations and take quick and informed decisions. “With the deployment, we are now able to not only monitor and report but also encompass end-user experience, internal application processes and flows, as well as the underlying software and system infrastructure. We have consolidated three databases into one. We are now able to monitor objects and events throughout the network. We have online links to access the data flow from three plants and using RF links through Reliance communications. The whole system has increased data access by up to 50% since it has gone live," explains Mata.

After systematising the whole database process, Sonic Biochem is now in the process of deploying VPN solutions to make the network more secure as most of the employees are remotely accessing the network.