Koyo Materica Corporation has been expanding its business along with the growth of the automotive industry. Together with multiple suppliers, Koyo provides products that meet the needs of customers in a wide range of fields, including automotive parts, electronic parts, construction equipment, and energy-saving related parts. In addition, the company is expanding its processing business field and further expanding its business in overseas locations by leveraging its accumulated expertise in automotive and electrical components.

　In order to meet the overseas business needs of its customers, the company has been expanding its business by establishing new bases every year: Thailand in 2010, Hong Kong in 2011, Indonesia in 2012, and Shanghai in 2013. However, in promoting its overseas business, the company faced several issues from the perspective of business management. One of them was to grasp accounting information. Naohiro Kawamura, General Manager of the Finance & Accounting Department, says, "It took one to one and a half month after the monthly closing of accounts to accurately grasp the sales and financial status of our overseas offices, which caused a time lag. As the scale of our overseas operations expanded and their importance grew, there was a growing need from management to grasp the figures on a consolidated basis," he said.

　Another major issue was inefficient Excel-based operations. Tatsuya Inagaki, who is also the president of the Shanghai-based local subsidiary and an executive officer, says, "The financial accounting and sales management systems have been inefficient.

　The financial accounting and sales management systems were not standardized, as they were done in different ways at each locations. For example, at the Shanghai site, bookkeeping, order forms, and invoices were all based on Excel, which was inefficient. If there were any errors on the invoices, they would be stopped by customs, so accurate management through a system was essential. In addition, we wanted to implement a system that would allow us to visualize the status of our operations from our head office in Japan at any time.

　In order to solve the above issues, Koyo Materica decided to implement GLASIAOUS. The first system to be upgraded was the accounting system at the Thai site. The Thai office was using a local accounting system, so Japanese staff had to spend a lot of time checking the information. "After considering multilingual accounting software that could be used by both Japanese and local staff, we selected GLASIAOUS," said Mr. Kawamura.

　The implementation of the software took place in the summer of 2020, and after confirming its effectiveness, the company continued with a horizontal rollout to Shanghai and Hong Kong. In Thailand and Indonesia, where the company conducts processing operations and serves as a production base, the system was implemented as a system that handles operational management and accounting management besides production management functions, in order to balance the existing system.

　Mr. Kawamura says, "We decided to adopt the system based on a comprehensive evaluation of not only its functions and cost, but also its multilingual support (Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, etc.) and intuitive operability.

Regarding B-EN-G's support, Mr. Kawamura said, "We wanted to implemented the system while talking with the local staff, but the Corona disaster prevented us from it. However, the B-EN-G representatives were very attentive to the needs of the local staff, using a remote environment, so we were able to implement the system almost on schedule.

The greatest effect of GLASIAOUS was the speedy sharing of accounting information at each location. Mr. Kawamura says, "The speed of reporting to management on a quarterly basis has improved, and since GLASIAOUS allows us to dig deeper into detailed information, the managers at each location have a better grasp of the situation and are able to capture changes in figures than when they were reporting based on financial statements from an accounting firm.

　The Shanghai office also uses GLASIAOUS for the accounting firm that had requested bookkeeping services, and the same screen is used for communication between the local office, the accounting firm, and the Japanese headquarters, which has led to increased efficiency in accounting operations. The Shanghai office had previously outsourced most of its accounting work, including bookkeeping, but the introduction of GLASIAOUS has allowed the office to shift to self-accounting, and now about 80% of its work is completed within the office.

　Mr. Inagaki also noted the following effect on sales management: "Preliminary figures on sales and gross profit, progress during the term and month, and performance against budget can be instantly grasped from the Japan base. We can now prepare materials for the monthly board meeting in about three days, whereas it used to take about half a month. The ability to go back and check the history and to easily output reports are also advantages of the systemization."

　Mr. Soichi Arai of the Overseas Business Strategy Office and of the Finance and Accounting Department, who is in charge of consolidated accounting, also comments on the merits of the system. In the past, we had to collect Excel files from each overseas office to perform consolidated accounting. That was fine if we just wanted to pick up the numbers for each account, but GLASIAOUS is indispensable when we want to know the details. Now, if I have a question, I can drill down and check it using GLASIAOUS without having to individually contact the person in charge at each location. The man-hours required for consolidated accounting have been cut by about half compared to before.

　Currently, budget management at each site is based on Excel files, but in the future, the company plans to use GLASIAOUS' budget function to improve the efficiency of forecast and actual management. The company is also considering data integration with the consolidated accounting system currently in use, which is expected to further reduce man-hours. Mr. Inagaki says, "We would like to use GLASIAOUS from the start when we set up new overseas offices in the future." GLASIAOUS is expected to become increasingly indispensable in strengthening the company's overseas business.

Koyo Materica Corporation

http://www.koyom.co.jp/eng/