A case study following Crestron's initial decision to implement SAP R/3 as its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system through more recent upgrades, with BearingPoint's help, to implement further process improvements.

1. Crestron Electronics
Using SAP to streamline
operations of a manufacturer
Company information Crestron Electronics, Inc., a fast-growing manufacturer of high-end control and automation solutions
for corporate, residential and educational markets, had decided to implement SAP as the backbone
Client: Crestron Electronics, Inc. of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. With BearingPoint’s help, the company was able to
Headquarters: Rockleigh, N.J. deliver SAP process improvements and to increase the number of orders processed, reduce customer
complaints and improve access to sales, finance and inventory metrics.
Revenue: U.S.$400 million
Employees: More than 1,200
Latest achievements: Benefits Achieved through
• 2008 Consumer Electronics Association Process Improvements:
Industry: Automation and control Mark of Excellence Award for the best in • Increased number of orders processed by
custom home electronics products, services 53 percent without increasing headcount
and installed technology
• Eliminated 500 accounts receivable (A/R)
• 2008 CEDIA Electronic Lifestyles Awards man-hours annually with automated invoice
for excellence in the residential electronic generation matching
systems industry:
• Reduced customer complaints on shipping
– Best New Product for Crestron iServer™ charges by 97 percent
– Best New Technology for Crestron
• Delivered on-demand, executive-level access
Adagio Digital Media System (ADMS)
to sales, finance and inventory data
– Inaugural Inductee into CEDIA Product Hall
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2. Crestron Electronics
Looking to grow
Electronics manufacturers have experienced profound market changes since 2001.
Products and services are more commoditized due to accelerating globalization, more
demanding customers and an increasingly complex sales environment. As a result,
electronics manufacturers are seeking new ways to protect margins and promote growth.
Crestron Electronics, Inc., a fast-growing, medium-size electronics manufacturer based in
“BearingPoint helped us plot a Rockleigh, N.J., realized its client/server ERP system could no longer provide robust sales,
technology road map to continue finance and inventory information. In 2003, the company’s IT department replaced its
expansion of our business by existing system with SAP R/3. After the SAP system went live, Crestron did not enhance
its SAP system until 2006.
fully using our SAP investment.”
By 2006, Crestron realized that it needed to enhance its SAP implementation to help increase
—Andrew Ho, Director of Business sales and profits. With a compound annual growth rate of 12 percent, the manufacturer knew
Projects, Crestron Electronics, Inc. its first priority was its customers; however, it became evident that its lack of experience with
SAP would become a competitive liability for the company. Crestron needed a dedicated SAP
adviser with extensive experience and knowledge to help its business projects department
address operational and strategic issues and derive more value from its SAP investment.
Relying on experience
After receiving detailed responses to its request for proposals, Crestron selected BearingPoint
for its technical insight into specific business areas and its experience with more than
3,500 SAP implementations. Using BearingPoint’s methodology, consultants mapped
Crestron’s SAP implementation and developed an enterprisewide approach to how Crestron
could realign processes, make organizational improvements, set up customer satisfaction
programs, administer change management and conduct systems integration. Specifically,
BearingPoint’s project team helped Crestron:
• Unify its existing SAP, supply chain management and customer relationship management
(CRM) systems to support business expansion
Figure 1. Number of orders processed • Outline a road map to guide its business projects department through additional business-
per quarter at critical points of SAP critical technology rollouts
implementation
Methodology details
1000 With Crestron’s legacy ERP system, executives lacked access to sales, inventory and finance,
including A/R and order-to-cash (OTC) process information. To obtain performance metrics,
814 Crestron executives had to rely on a difficult and time-consuming manual process that required
800 searching e-mails and notes to collect and analyze the necessary data. Then, senior staff with
711
systems knowledge had to interpret the data. The entire process required significant admin-
600 istrative overhead and took employees away from their other important responsibilities.
532
Working closely with Crestron, BearingPoint came to understand the company’s challenges
Post-implementation
Post-implementation
and created an approach to address them with an appropriate set of SAP analytics. Now,
Pre-implementation
400
Crestron has on-demand reports for sales, finance and inventory—using data that existed
in Crestron’s ERP system but was not previously utilized.
200
Streamlining processes
Crestron needed a scalable, more efficient business system that could handle growth.
0
Q1 2006 Q1 2007 Q1 2008 Improving the SAP order-processing solution allowed the company to increase the number
of orders processed per quarter by 53 percent (Figure 1), without increasing headcount,
and keep up with its growing business.
2 Insight | Case Study

3. As an industry leader committed to its clients’ goals, BearingPoint delivered quick
and measurable results to Crestron, adding value at the appropriate steps of its
three-year SAP road map. By enhancing Crestron’s SAP-based sales, distribution and finance
functions, BearingPoint helped the company gain significant operational benefits within
its OTC process.
“The process improvements that BearingPoint helped us create made our order-to-cash
process more efficient, which laid the groundwork for productivity gains in other business-
“The process improvements that
critical areas,” says Andrew Ho, Crestron’s director of business projects.
BearingPoint helped us with made
BearingPoint also helped Crestron streamline its OTC process and configure business rules our order-to-cash process more
within SAP, automating many processes that Crestron used to perform manually. This
efficient, which laid the groundwork
allowed the company to keep up with the increased demand for order processing without
hiring new personnel, even with significant business growth. In addition, using automated for productivity gains in other
invoice generation and matching helped the company save 500 man-hours annually in business-critical areas.”
its A/R department.
—Andrew Ho, Director of Business
Using the enhanced SAP system, Crestron can now automatically generate invoices overnight Projects, Crestron Electronics, Inc.
via batch-process computing, significantly reducing its need for manual labor. Invoices that
were previously faxed or sent via e-mail have also been automated. The system also allows
Crestron’s bank to handle matching and reconciliation of payments by interacting with its
SAP system, promoting quicker resolution and identification of exceptions.
Crestron’s customers are also benefiting from improvements to its SAP system. The company
was receiving complaints about shipping charges billed outside customer accounts. To
resolve this problem, BearingPoint modified the SAP system to properly track and directly bill
each customer’s shipping account. Since it began using individual customer United Parcel
Service accounts rather than custom invoices, Crestron’s customer complaints have decreased
by 97 percent (Figure 2). Customer service representatives can now focus on more business-
critical processes such as customer retention and past-due invoice resolution.
Looking to the future
Today, BearingPoint continues to guide and support Crestron by realigning and improving
processes, further enhancing its SAP system to increase customer satisfaction and managing
change. Crestron’s modernized SAP system provides the company with a foundation to
support its growing business through improved customer service and sales. A three-year road
map to provide even greater efficiency is under development, comprising implementation Figure 2. Number of customer account
of SAP CRM 2007 and integration with its new SAP ERP Central Component 6.0 platform complaints per month
and business warehouse systems.
75
75
About this case study
Research and analysis for this study was conducted by Mainstay Partners, an independent 55
consulting firm, and was based on information gathered from interviews, planning
documents and searches of industry literature.
35
Mainstay Partners is a leading provider of independent value assessment and IT strategy
services. Our clients include Motorola, Honeywell, Oracle, EMC, Network Appliance, SAP,
Microsoft and BearingPoint. For more information, visit www.mainstaypartners.net. 15
2
Information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources considered reliable, 0
but it is not warranted by Mainstay Partners. Copyright © 2008 Mainstay Partners LLC. -5 Legacy Current
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4. Helping our clients get sustainable, measurable results
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