Insight | Case Study

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

of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. With BearingPoint’s help, the company was able to

deliver SAP process improvements and to increase the number of orders processed, reduce customer

complaints and improve access to sales, finance and inventory metrics.

Company information

Client: Crestron Electronics, Inc.

Headquarters: Rockleigh, N.J.

Revenue: U.S.$400 million

Employees: More than 1,200

Industry: Automation and control

Using SAP to streamline operations of a manufacturer

Crestron Electronics

Latest achievements:

• 2008 Consumer Electronics Association

Mark of Excellence Award for the best in

custom home electronics products, services

and installed technology

• 2008 CEDIA Electronic Lifestyles Awards

for excellence in the residential electronic

systems industry:

– Best New Product for Crestron iServer™

– Best New Technology for Crestron

Adagio Digital Media System (ADMS)

– Inaugural Inductee into CEDIA Product Hall

of Fame for Crestron SmarTouch™ (STS)

Benefits Achieved through Process Improvements:

• Increased number of orders processed by

53 percent without increasing headcount

• Eliminated 500 accounts receivable (A/R)

man-hours annually with automated invoice

generation matching

• Reduced customer complaints on shipping

charges by 97 percent

• Delivered on-demand, executive-level access

to sales, finance and inventory data

2 Insight | Case Study

“BearingPoint helped us plot a

technology road map to continue

expansion of our business by

fully using our SAP investment.”

—Andrew Ho, Director of Business

Projects, Crestron Electronics, Inc.

Looking to growElectronics 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

Rockleigh, N.J., realized its client/server ERP system could no longer provide robust sales,

finance and inventory information. In 2003, the company’s IT department replaced its

existing system with SAP R/3. After the SAP system went live, Crestron did not enhance

its SAP system until 2006.

By 2006, Crestron realized that it needed to enhance its SAP implementation to help increase

sales and profits. With a compound annual growth rate of 12 percent, the manufacturer knew

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 experienceAfter 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

• Outline a road map to guide its business projects department through additional business-

critical technology rollouts

Methodology detailsWith 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,

Crestron executives had to rely on a difficult and time-consuming manual process that required

searching e-mails and notes to collect and analyze the necessary data. Then, senior staff with

systems knowledge had to interpret the data. The entire process required significant admin-

istrative overhead and took employees away from their other important responsibilities.

Working closely with Crestron, BearingPoint came to understand the company’s challenges

and created an approach to address them with an appropriate set of SAP analytics. Now,

Crestron has on-demand reports for sales, finance and inventory—using data that existed

in Crestron’s ERP system but was not previously utilized.

Streamlining processesCrestron needed a scalable, more efficient business system that could handle growth.

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.

Crestron Electronics

Figure 1. Number of orders processed

per quarter at critical points of SAP

implementation

Pre-

impl

emen

tati

on

Post

-impl

emen

tati

on

Post

-impl

emen

tati

on

Q1 2006 Q1 2007 Q1 20080

200

400

600

800

1000

711

814

532

“The process improvements that

BearingPoint helped us with made

our order-to-cash process more

efficient, which laid the groundwork

for productivity gains in other

business-critical areas.”

—Andrew Ho, Director of Business

Projects, Crestron Electronics, Inc.

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-

critical areas,” says Andrew Ho, Crestron’s director of business projects.

BearingPoint also helped Crestron streamline its OTC process and configure business rules

within SAP, automating many processes that Crestron used to perform manually. This

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

invoice generation and matching helped the company save 500 man-hours annually in

its A/R department.

Using the enhanced SAP system, Crestron can now automatically generate invoices overnight

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 futureToday, 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

of SAP CRM 2007 and integration with its new SAP ERP Central Component 6.0 platform

and business warehouse systems.

About this case studyResearch and analysis for this study was conducted by Mainstay Partners, an independent

consulting firm, and was based on information gathered from interviews, planning

documents and searches of industry literature.

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.

Information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources considered reliable,

but it is not warranted by Mainstay Partners. Copyright © 2008 Mainstay Partners LLC.

Figure 2. Number of customer account

complaints per month

Current

2

Legacy

0

-5

15

35

55

7575

Helping our clients get sustainable, measurable resultsBearingPoint is a leading management and technology consulting company serving

the Forbes Global 2000 and many of the world’s largest public services organizations.

Our thousands of passionate, experienced consultants help organizations around the

world solve their most pressing challenges, day in and day out. Through our collaborative

and flexible approach, we help our clients get practical, sustainable, measurable results,

make the right strategic decisions and implement the right solutions.

We are BearingPoint, management and technology consultants.

To learn more, contact us at 1 866 BRNGPNT (+1 508 216 2523 from outside the

United States and Canada), or visit our Web site at www.bearingpoint.com.

Insight | Case Study

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