According to a report in India’s Business Standard, Ceat Tyres has recently automated its business processes on the Software Application Protocol (SAP) platform. The SAP implementation covers the company’s entire office network, consisting of corporate office, two manufacturing plants, 34 regional offices, 28 RDCs, 125 clearing and forwarding agents, 3,500 dealers, a warehouse, 15 outsourcing locations, 8 RPD & Mixing locations.

Unlike most companies, who phase in new IT systems in stages, Ceat has opted to have all modules in its 180 plus locations go live at the same time. Ceat Tyres vice-president Arnab Banerjee explains the reason behind this decision: “If we look at the industry, most of our peers have used a phased approach. We were advised to follow it too. However, in this kind of implementation there is resistance to change and opposition to new systems and processes. So, we thought that instead of going through these issues in phases, let’s take the problem head-on and implement it in one go.” The project was implemented within a timeframe of eight months.