Fenix ERP system helps orders fly for stora enso, Solutions!, Online Exclusives, March 2003

Fenix ERP system helps orders fly for Stora Enso

The Fenix system has been custom-designed to help Stora Enso and its customers manage orders for optimum customer service and efficiency.

PartnerWeb is a web-based ERP-system. A demo version for a communicator, shown here, has been implemented. (Photo by Jaakko Repo)

Finnish company Stora Enso Oyj, one of the world’s leading forest products companies, is implementing a new ERP solution for sales and logistics that is one of the first of its kind in the paper industry. The Fenix system is a real-time solution that covers the entire order through delivery chain of Stora Enso’s paper and board production. This global information system for sales and logistics management has been tailor-made for Stora Enso by TietoEnator, one of Europe’s leading suppliers of IT services.

The Fenix system consists of tools for budgeting, sales and production planning, contract management, sales and factory orders, distribution, logistics, invoicing, customer feedback, archiving and reporting. Budgeting and customer feedback tools have already been in use for several years at Stora Enso’s mills and sales offices. Fenix will decrease the number of previous systems in both the former Stora and Enso, and will standardize their operations. The system makes working towards common processes and goals possible—from order to delivery.

Real-time advantage
“One of the system’s greatest advantages is that one can follow in real time at which stage of the production chain the product is. We continuously have an overall view of orders and invoices,” points out Anna-Maija Karjalainen, vice president of Stora Enso’s Business Application Competence Centre (BACC). The BACC’s functions include giving support to the users of the Fenix system, guiding its further development, promoting its distribution and organizing training. BACC ensures that the system works within Stora Enso’s business as effectively and flexibly as possible.

Other advantages of the Fenix system are that it improves customer service, increases the efficiency of operations and standardizes reporting. Furthermore, the system unifies the concepts for sales and other operational users. Access via a wireless connection means that customers now obtain their desired information—such as delivery times, quantities, prices, and stock availability—instantly over the telephone. Customers also benefit from improved sales, production and logistics planning, as well as shorter planning times. Practical and user-friendly tools facilitate routines and, if required, the system alerts when additional measures need to be taken.

A wireless, real-time connection means that the system can be reached from anywhere in the world. Sales personnel can check product availability, update current orders, or print reports while on the road. The principal users of Fenix are those dealing with operational sales, invoicing, production planning and customer service. Fenix is currently used in approximately ten Stora Enso mills and in all the sales companies dealing with them. The company aims to implement the system in all of the group’s 40 European mills and every sales company.

The customer connection
The system also features PartnerWeb, a customized interface designed to operate on top of the Fenix system that enables the division’s major customers to browse information concerning their orders. This extranet application is currently in use with more than 20 of Stora Enso’s key customers, and roll-outs are continuing.

PartnerWeb gives customers real-time access to their information at all times—a key point of sharing business information with customers, since the system is always on-line regardless of time zones or office hours, said eBusiness Manager Kirsi Viskari, leader of the PartnerWeb project at Stora Enso.

TietoEnator’s web team designed and built the application, Viskari explained. “We provided our needs and defined the demands for functionality, so we have represented the end user’s viewpoint in the project. It’s not simple to alter a big system or to add on new features. At the same time, web implementation projects like PartnerWeb should advance quickly. TietoEnator’s challenge has been to quickly implement light solutions that nonetheless provide the level of functionality required by the web world.”

Viskari noted that the implementation of the web-application has gone very smoothly. “The making of a web layer on top of an ERP system is a bit like decorating a cake,” she said. “It enables you to take advantage of the primary system’s effective features and its refinements as well as its technical structure. We can then do the things that truly bring out the benefits of the system.”

The Fenix system was launched in the autumn of 2000. PartnerWeb’s pilot version was introduced in October, 2001, with a pilot customer. The roll-out to other customer has continued together with the implementation of new versions.

Stora Enso customers have indicated that the most important benefits of PartnerWeb are the real-time aspect, which the Fenix system makes structurally possible, and the fact that Fenix is accessible 24/7. “Another major advantage is the conquering of language barriers,” said Viskari. “It is much easier to obtain information through the Internet than to for example speak in a foreign language on a telephone with a bad connection.” In the autumn of 2003, PartnerWeb plans to introduce other language versions in addition to English—German, French, Spanish, Swedish and Finnish.

New ways of managing businesses
Because TietoEnator designed the Fenix system exclusively for Stora Enso, it is not available “off the shelf,” noted Viskari. “It is altogether unique in the forest industry. PartnerWeb is also our own solution. It can’t be directly transferred to another company. PartnerWeb is a strategic-level issue at Stora Enso, and is considered to have tremendous potential in developing new ways of managing businesses.”

For further information, contact:
Anna-Maija Karjalainen,
vice president, BACC, Stora Enso,
+358 (0)20-46131,
email: maija.karjalainen@storaenso.com

Eija Viljanen, manager,
sales and logistics,
TietoEnator Forest,
+358 (0)9-3486 4313,
email: eija.t.viljanen@tietoenator.com