Lighting sector market leader steers business in real time

Kanlux is one of the largest Polish companies in the lighting sector. After just 20 years in this market, the company’s turnover is in the tens of millions of Euro. Kanlux has a solid foothold in Eastern Europe and is planning to expand to France and Germany.

Kanlux’s employees use an ERP system in their daily work. Since the company’s policy is to deliver orders within 24-hours, this system must be constantly/permanently accessible. To achieve this, they decided to consolidate their IT infrastructure to support all KPE Group’s departments spread across Europe. A single investment in high-end technologies turned out to be more cost-effective than providing equipment to each department separately. This resulted in more efficient equipment utilization and reduced direct operating costs. The two most important components of the investment were: essential communication channels and a unique HA (High Availability) system, implemented by GridwiseTech.

KPE Group’s IT system consists of corporate ERP, an Oracle database installation, an MsSQL data warehouse and OLAP reports. Sales reps and warehousemen constantly use the integrated system. The Board reviews the overall data twice a day. To grant business continuity for all users of corporate applications, GridwiseTech recommended and implemented a real-time data integration solution. The final system is based on Oracle GoldenGate, enabling business data to be stored in many disparate locations simultaneously. All changes made in one location are instantly replicated to back-up locations. In the event of main system outages, a failover system seamlessly takes over its role and users can work without any interruptions. GoldenGate is also used to maintain business continuity during planned maintenance downtime—user productivity remains unaffected.

Bartosz Ceglarski

President of Kanlux

Why is business continuity so important for Kanlux?

Bartosz Ceglarski, President of Kanlux:

"None of us can afford to waste time—the system just has to work.” He goes on to say: “Our sales people cannot wait 5 minutes—maybe they are at a business meeting and need to process the order immediately? The Board needs to oversee sales in real time according to region, sales rep and product. Now, we have something we are proud of: our customer service operates continuously. We are well-known for the best customer service in the lighting sector and I’d like to keep it this way."

The approach seems to be right: Kanlux has been successfully expanding into other markets. This one-time investment has created a robust IT Infrastructure for all the companies within the Group, spread over several European countries. Real-time data integration with Oracle technologies has proven to be effective in the largest companies in the world. Kanlux is one of only a handful of Polish companies that is reaping its benefits.

GridwiseTech designed and implemented the final system. Pawel Plaszczak, President of GridwiseTech, says that many enterprises are looking to invest in business continuity now: “IT awareness constantly increases, the tide of the financial crisis is receding and IT budgets grow—all these factors are motivating companies to secure the continuity of their business processes. Advanced technologies, such as GoldenGate, can provide stable foundations”.

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