Sako Limited Improves Productivity through Enterprise Resource Planning, Meets Performance Requirements with Fast, High-Performance Database
 
 

Sako Limited Improves Productivity through Enterprise Resource Planning, Meets Performance Requirements with Fast, High-Performance Database

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Part of the international Beretta Group, Sako Limited is a leading hunting and sports rifle manufacturer in Europe. Sako Limited specializes in designing and manufacturing hunting and sports rifles and cartridges, and is responsible for worldwide marketing and sales. The company headquartered in Riihimäki, Finland, has affiliates in Sweden and Canada. In Finland, Sako Limited also acts as a rifle and cartridge importer and wholesaler.

Sako implemented Oracle's JD Edwards applications as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, after first using IBM’s DB2 database. After Sako went live with its JD Edwards solutions, it encountered problems with the legacy database performance and decided to replace it with Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition which proved to be much faster.

Sako is also in the process of implementing Oracle's business intelligence solutions to make internal reporting faster and more accurate. The business intelligence solutions are live, except for the Oracle Essbase project, which is still ongoing.

Sako uses Oracle Premier Support, which has responded quickly to all its implementation-related challenges, and it has provided reliable help to the company’s IT staff. Occasionally, Sako also uses My Oracle Support Community to find usage examples and other users’ opinions about new versions.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Sako Limited

  • "Oracle takes us seriously as a customer, even though we are only a midsize company. By using Oracle Premier Support for our software and database products, we have realized the benefits of quality technology backed by excellent, industry-leading support. Oracle responded quickly to our implementation needs and has been a reliable resource to our IT staff. Overall, Oracle Support Services played a crucial role in making this project a success." – Ari Kukkonen, IT Engineer, Sako Limited

  • Upgraded to Oracle's JD Edwards applications to enhance enterprise data usage within the company by consolidating purchase, sales, and product management data previously stored in various databases
  • Increase in-house JD Edwards expertise after most of the superusers involved in its original implementation had left the company
  • Obtain the best possible high-performance database to replace the company's legacy IBM database that performed insufficiently after the ERP upgrade
  • Accelerate generating consolidated invoices for sales of rifles and cartridges made in Finland
  • Accelerate internal reports on such things as sales, productivity, delivery performance, product quality, and inventory levels, and make the reports more accurate by obtaining effective business intelligence (BI) software

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Worked with Oracle Consulting to implement version 9.0 of Oracle's JD Edwards applications, which provided a single consolidated system to streamline the flow and data usage for purchasing, sales, and product management, and improved productivity by providing better system performance, which shortened wait times
  • Improved the current IT staff’s knowledge about JD Edwards during the upgrade project
  • Replaced the outdated IBM DB2 database with Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition to improve performance
  • Saved dozens of work hours each month by accelerating generation of consolidated invoices for rifles and cartridges—from one hour to less than two minutes per invoice
  • Worked with Rittman Mead Consulting Ltd. to implement Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, Enterprise Edition Plus and Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite to make internal financial- and production-related reporting faster and more accurate

Why Oracle

Sako Limited chose Oracle's JD Edwards ERP applications partly because it was being used by Beretta Group, which acquired Sako in 2000, and partly because the company was not able to find a better product in its own evaluation.

“We chose Oracle Database because it was the best possible database to replace our legacy IBM DB2 database, said Ari Kukkonen, IT engineer, Sako Limited. “And we chose Oracle's business intelligence solutions because we can easily integrate them with Oracle's JD Edwards applications.”

Partner

Oracle Consulting was responsible for the implementation of JD Edwards, and Oracle Partner Rittman Mead Consulting Ltd helped Sako with the implementation of Oracle’s business intelligence solutions.