Brother Gulf goes Swedish, takes swipes

Printing vendor Brother Gulf has announced it is entering the final stages of implementing a new enterprise resource planning system from Swedish business software developer IFS.

Brother Gulf may have an axe or two to grind, because IT managers there did point out specifically that the IFS system will be replacing an Orion ERP system from 3i Infotech and that the felt the latest version of Orion “had too many disadvantages.” With the change, Brother Gulf also decided against SAP software, due to time concerns.

Hilariously enough, Brother Gulf customer support manager Nizar Wehby actually complained about the upgraded Orion and 3i Infotech to IT Weekly. “They [3i Infotech] changed the interface only [with the upgraded version] but the core was the same. The old one was like two or three modules, hardly related or integrated together, and it does not have many things that we required.” In response, 3i representatives took their case to the media, with one spokesman stating to itp.net that “Brother Gulf had not evaluated the latest version and therefore he did not know how the vendor could make a comparison between its version of Orion and the latest upgrade.”

In any event, what’s done is done, and what’s done is Brother’s purchasing of six modules from IFS including finance, distribution, accounting, service management, and customer relationship management at a cost of approximately US $700,000.

Ranjit Gurkar, Brother Gulf general manager, has described the implementation as a “total overhaul.” Thus far, the implementation has taken 18 months, but online services were up and running in January. The next step for Brother is implementation of a CRM system and a web portal that would allow partners to log into the vendor’s system and check their account status and place orders. This advance is expected sometime in 2007.