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This is a Guest post by Salman Munir - an avid Green & White contributor. To contribute your articles, see the toolbar above.

I recently got compelled to get in touch with my friends at Acrologix, who were awarded the contract to develop an ERP for auto parts manufacturers industry of Pakistan a.k.a. PAAPAM. They have coined the name AutoPLUS for the ERP. I met Salman Mustafa, Project Manager at Acrologix

 

Me:

Right of the bat, explain to us what is AutoPlus?

 

Salman Mustafa:    

AutoPLUS is a comprehensive ERP, which consists of six integrated modules namely ‘Human Resource Management’, ‘Finance & Accounts’, ‘Raw Material Inventory’, ‘Sales’, ‘Production’ and ‘Finished Goods Inventory’ modules. It covers the complete business cycle of an auto part manufacturing industry. It has many features for the users like its user-oriented interfaces and its exhaustive reporting features. We (Acrologix) have developed this product in collaboration with Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) under its Industrial Automation Project, which is mainly focused on MIS revival of local industries.

 

Me:                            

What’s the biggest hurdle, which you faced in this Project?

Salman Mustafa:    

I believe that hurdles are good because they improve quality of your work. Hurdles were many but I’ll mention the biggest one we faced. Lack of User Interest due to Government Funded Project: As its a PSEB funded project and not by the beneficiary industrial units so naturally lack of interest was there, which caused fewer inputs by the target users. You know that this kind of situation may lead to the project failure because we don’t know that either we are focusing on the right solutions of real life problems or not. We overcame this situation by hiring Industry experts as our consultants. Their vast experience in auto part manufacturing industry really complements the lack of user input situation and the result is in front of us in the shape of product like ‘AutoPLUS’.

 

Me:                            

I understand that the project is based on a LAMP stack. Why you have used open source technology? And are there any difficulties associated with this step?

 

Salman Mustafa:    

As far as use of open source technology is concerned its Government of Pakistan policy because use of open source technology rules out almost all type of overhead costs like licensing etc. Technically, the LAMP stack has achieved a status where you see many enterprise products coming on top of it. Big vendors are pushing for adoption of the stack. Its not the technology which is to be blamed for failed projects, it’s the method and right use of practices, which makes a project successful. 

 

Now come to the difficulties portion of the question; yes there are some difficulties like non-availability of LAMP trained resources but we have overcome difficulties like these by in-house training of fresh but conceptually strong graduates. We developed the base framework just like our desktop-Microsoft based solutions and later developed around it

 

Me:                            

So How do you compare Open Source with Microsoft Platform, as majority of your company solutions are based on the Microsoft platform and development technologies?

 

Salman Mustafa:    

Each platform has its pros and cons but I think open source technologies are here to stay. Many interesting things are coming up in these technologies.

 

After successful completion of the software, for web-based environment I don’t feel any major disadvantages.

 

Me:                            

Which module of AutoPLUS do you think took more time to develop and why?

 

Salman Mustafa:    

‘Production’ module, time wise  not only in analysis phase but also in development; and its main reason is difference between type and processes of production of almost each unit. In this situation the statement of work for Production module is “Production module is this much capable that it can handle almost all type of productions even with their minute details in business oriented fashion”. This was the biggest challenge for us.

 

Me:                            

How you justify the ROI of AutoPLUS?

 

Salman Mustafa:    

Most important question; I must say. As per statistics recently published in almost all renowned newspapers of Pakistan; Industrial users of AutoPLUS under PSEB banner has achieved 75% reduction in human resource usage and 85% reduction in time investment by the implementation of AutoPLUS (Reference: These figures are from a recent study conducted by PSEB under their impact analysis program). I think after this statement there is no need to further justify ROI of AutoPLUS.

 

Me:                            

What is Total Cost of Ownership of AutoPLUS?

 

Salman Mustafa:    

Form the day one in this project, we have targeted the achievement of minimum possible Cost of Ownership and we have achieved the same. Again I am referring the impact analysis study of PSEB as I referred above; as per this study Cost of Ownership of AutoPLUS for industrial units under PSEB banner is almost 15% of the total cost which they are saving through this ERP. Is not it Great?

 

Me:                            

Any thing which you want to say to the audience?

 

Salman Mustafa:    

If you are a Pakistani then please do promote proud Pakistani products like AutoPLUS and if you are from rest of the world then I take this opportunity to promote my country Pakistan as a reliable software outsourcing market.