Oxford University Press partners with Intelligent Systems to streamline business processes

About the company

Oxford University Press has over 50 offices worldwide and is the largest university press in the world.  It publishes more than 6000 titles a year in 40+ languages, and in a variety of formats–print and digital.

Their products cover an extremely broad academic and educational spectrum, for all audiences – from pre-school to secondary level schoolchildren; students to academics; general readers to researchers; individuals to institutions.

The situation

As of 2020, the Turkish division of Oxford University Press has been active in the country for almost 26 years. However, a distribution network was active for more than 50 years before that, establishing Oxford University Press as a well-respected publishing house in the country. Now it is an irreplaceable part of the education system in Turkey, with more than 16 vendors and 3000 schools as their clients.

“From kindergarten to university, there is at least one book in every school where there is an English class” – Erkan Akmeric, General Manager at Oxford University Press Turkey

Back when the Turkish division was being established, Oxford University Press had started an implementation of software systems to help them with their day-to-day processes. Though these software solutions for stock management, as well as financial and accounting management, were developed for the company in order to run business operations better, they weren’t integrated with one another. Instead of helping management see the bigger picture, they obscured it by giving out bits and pieces of data that didn’t necessarily make sense together. Furthermore, those systems could not be customized to fit the changing needs of Oxford University Press Turkey. The company needed the right monitoring and analytical instruments which would give them a real overview of their business processes. As the Turkish office was realizing that their current software solutions did not fit their growing requirements, changes started coming from headquarters itself. In 2017, the UK headquarters and a few other country divisions started to migrate to SAP. Oxford University Press Turkey also examined different ERP systems including such of Logo and SAP. But finally, it settled on Microsoft Dynamics ERP and in 2018 the implementation began.

“As ERP systems are generally long-term collaborations, the harmony between the teams is also important. So, taking this into account and analyzing the costs and benefits, we decided Intelligent Systems is the right partner for us.” – Erkan Akmeric, General Manager at Oxford University Press Turkey

The solution

After an extensive and constructive analysis of the needs of the company, Oxford University Press and Intelligent Systems agreed that the Dynamics 365 Business Central solution is the right fit for the company. After 5 months, the implementation was complete. This was done in two phases: the first one lasted three months and it covered the complex processes within Oxford University Press Turkey, such as the preparation and delivery of books to schools, the imports according to customs requirements, and successful storage management. Furthermore, the solution covered Oxford University Press requirements in regard to their finances, accounting, sales and stock control processes. The second part of the implementation was concentrated on customization and improvements that would further improve the company’s operations.

“Intelligent Systems has a very good command of Microsoft products. At this stage there are some warehouse automation issues which we could not foresee during the project execution. We will bring this issue on the table in the upcoming days and set our investment budget to start the implementation with Intelligent Systems. We aim to implement this with Intelligent Systems.”

– Mustafa Atakay, Project Manager at Oxford University Press Turkey

Key benefits

Soon after the implementation, Oxford University Press employees and management began experiencing the improvements that Dynamics 365 Business Central brought to their operations. Some of the benefits include:

• All data is stored in a single system, giving management a clear overview on the business performance. Reports are simple and fast to generate.
• Sales representatives can use the solution no matter where they are located.
• Distributors can place orders with any device and anywhere.
• Orders are confirmed and processed immediately.
• Stock levels at the warehouse are easily traced and replenished.