Mumbai based Ajmera Builders have been in the business of real state development for over 40 years. Part of the Ajmera Group of companies, they have been involved in several major housing projects in the city and are a well known entity in Mumbai’s realty space.

In addition to further strengthening its operations in Mumbai, the Ajmera group has been aiming to tap into the booming real estate market in Bangalore. Recent reports suggested that the company was in the process of acquiring land in Bangalore for future projects and planning to invest an estimated Rs 300 crore on residential developments in the city over the next couple of years.

In order to manage its expanding operations and support its future growth plans, the company recently implemented Gamut Infosystems’ Matrix ERP package.

Legacy Issues

Managing operations in construction business is not easy, especially for a company with multi location operations and simultaneous projects at hand. Keeping track of all the projects, material, performance, processes such as purchase and planning, cost management is by no means an easy task. For years Ajmera relied on some custom developed in-house software packages to manage its different processes such as finance & accounting. The company ran some Excel and DOS-based packages for processes like inventory management, material management, planning etc. In addition to this a number of processes were handled manually.

However, these systems were fairly disconnected and often didn’t provide the required visibility into the processes they managed.

According to Abhinav Chaturvedi, manager - ERP systems, Ajmera Group, “Because most of our earlier systems were isolated and didn’t interact with each other, they didn’t lead to efficient operations. We had compartmentalised approach to things and didn’t have an accurate, consolidated view of overall operations. Information flow was slow and consequently project monitoring was difficult. It is for these reasons that we felt the need for an integrated software package.”

Move To Matrix ERP

With the intent to change things for good and streamline operations for better, the company began evaluating different ERP software packages available in the market. After browsing through several prepackaged ERP offerings and carefully assessing its needs it decided to implement Matrix ERP, based on the array of functionalities the solution offered.

“We chose Matrix ERP over other competing offerings simply for the functionalities it offered. The capabilities offered in the solution covered almost every aspect of our daily operations,” said Chaturvedi.

The company kicked off the implementation in September ’06 and was able to go live with the ERP in April, this year. The implementation was done in stages and involved gradual phase out of the legacy systems.

Mumbai based Omnitech Infosolutions implemented the ERP at Ajmera.

Some of the modules that Ajmera chose to deploy included Estimation, Work Progress, Integration of MS Projects, Contractor Management, Materials Management, Financial Management, Payroll, Asset Management, Executive Dashboards and Marketing.

“We now have integrated processes that facilitate seamless flow of information across the company, a better MIS (Management Information System) that lets us manage resources more effectively. Many processes that were previously handled manually have now been automated,” informed Chaturvedi.

The ERP has helped Ajmera standardise its processes throughout the company and improve operational efficiency by allowing users from different departments to communicate with each other. The centralised system has resulted in fast and accurate exchange of critical information from the main office to different project sites leading to effective project monitoring and on-time completion of projects.