'IT can help tea industry increase market share'
Kingslake, in partnership with Infor USA hosted The Kingslake iTea
Forum recently in Colombo. Over 75 tea professionals, including tea
exporters and brokers, participated.
 Tea industry stalwarts made relevant and thought-provoking
presentations on various topics.
These encompassed the current trends and challenges in the industry,
and focused on how IT and ERP can, and does, help organisations improve
their productivity, agility and efficiency, thereby boosting their
overall growth.
Chairman, Kingslake, Dr. S. Dharmavasan said, "With the shift in IT
that we are witnessing where everything is progressing towards mobile
and portable formats and Cloud based infrastructure. He said this can
provide innumerable opportunities to the tea industry. By taking
advantage of this, businesses can progress to a new level.
Marketing Consultant, Heritage Teas, Mohan Mendis said technology can
be used to gain market share in an environment where beverages are
battling for quenching the consumer’s palate and thirst.
He said modern technology was being applied to create new products,
based on shifts in consumer behavior and thus it was possible to
increase market share.
Director, Finlays Colombo, Romesh Moraes, spoke on Value Addition. He
emphasised the fact that value equals happiness, and that happiness
equals meeting emotional and functional needs. ERP creates great value
and wellness to a company by allowing them to zoom into facts at any
point and see where they are and thereby strategise their future moves,
he said.
He thanked the IT specialists at Kingslake and Finlays for making
this possible for the Finlays Board and shareholders.
Project Manager, Qualitea Ceylon, Ajith Abeyawardena spoke about
selecting an ERP System, including setting up a team, preparation and
evaluation. He ended with a quote from Charles Darwin: “It is not the
strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent, but the
one that is the most responsive to change.”
Director, Ranfer Group, Niren Ranasinghe presented ‘Change or
Transformation?’. He said in the implementation of an ERP system, change
management can provide a systematic and effective approach to deal with
the numerous changes that a company and its individuals encounter.
General Manager, Basilur Tea, Sumith Jayawickrama said his company
uses Kingslake’s Tea solution based on Infor Syteline, to optimise
production and manage market dynamics of smaller order sizes and greater
pack sizes to cater to the modern day tea consumers' varying needs.
Principal Business Consultant at Kingslake, M. A. Sheriffdeen
introduced the Kingslake Tea System, illustrating how it can help those
at every level of the tea process, and showed the audience the various
interfaces of their different solutions.
CEO Kingslake, Duleep Fernando said, “Having partnered with many
clients in the tea industry for the past 20 years, providing them
business solutions based on IT, we think that the industry would benefit
if they got together to share their experiences with each other,
learning new ways on how IT can help the industry become a more robust,
profitable and a greater worldwide force, thereby increasing market
share and earnings benefiting Sri Lanka.”
Ming.le, Infor’s new collaboration platform that’s integrated to the
SyteLine ERP, was demonstrated at the event.
Kingslake has been providing software solutions to the tea industry
since its inception in 1994. |
