Pilot Crushtec SA is South Africa’s leading supplier of mobile and semi-mobile crushing, screening, recycling, sand washing, stockpiling, compacting and material handling solutions.Throughout its 20 year existence the company has achieved continuous long-term growth and sustainability by providing customers with the ultimate sales experience, high quality products and legendary after sales support.
With an annual turnover exceeding US$58-million, Pilot Crushtec markets its products and services in over 30 countries and is active in industries as diverse as coal, diamond, gold, cobalt and platinum mining, aggregate and sand quarrying, construction, civil engineering and recycling.
Melanie du Toit, Pilot Crushtec’s director of Finance and Administration, explains that as Pilot Crushtec’s business grew, the team found that its existing Pastel software was no longer able to handle its requirements.
“After researching various options, including Pastel Premier, Navision and Accpac, we opted to implement what was then known as Great Plains,” she says. “The most important factor in the decision to implement Dynamics was the support that we knew we would have access to,” says Du Toit. “Knowing that there is continuous investment, research and development into the Microsoft products, made the decision a comforting one.”
“Following some initial teething problems due to incorrect set-ups, we were introduced to Microsoft Gold Partner, Resolve Immix, who re-implemented the software and migrated our applicable data. At the time we were just 10 users.”
By 2009, due to continued growth – with a user base of around 40 people and a total staff complement of 150 at its head office and assembly factory in Jet Park – Pilot Crushtec faced the next challenge.
“We had set a strategic objective to reduce our inventory from the existing levels of around R140 million, to a more realistic target of around R100 million,” says Du Toit. “We also wanted to track our manufacturing costs more accurately.
On the advice of the Resolve Immix team, the company selected Microsoft Dynamics GP’s manufacturing suite of modules, to not only cover their immediate business needs, but to also provide management with greater insight into the business.
“This was successfully completed within four months.” says Du Toit, “Since dealing with Resolve Immix in the early days, the subsequent implementations and extensions of Microsoft Dynamics GP have all gone very well.”
“We are happy with our current setup and are always interested in the new developments, functionalities and enhancements that become available.”
Du Toit points out that through its fully integrated system, Pilot Crushtec now enjoys real-time access to accurate business data, enabling the management team to make more informed decisions.
It maintains tighter stock controls due to daily cycle counts, and therefore lower inventory levels. Improved efficiencies in terms of data management have also enabled the team to provide accurate business reports to the Board within a week of each month end.
“The ability to have our data available to us in the formats applicable to the various role players is a definite value-add to our business,” she says.
“The smooth implementation of the upgrades from version 8 to 9 and then to 10 have also ensured that we experienced very little down time – something that is crucial in our environment.