PSG Institute of Advanced Studies

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

MINI PROJECT

ESSENTIAL E-COMMERCE PROCESS IN

ROOTS INDUSTRIES INDIA LTD.

Mentor- Mr. S.C SHARMA

TEAM MEMBERS

Ashish Warrier- 9UTA02

Anju M B- 9UTA04

Siraj Ul Hassan- 9UTA34

Soumya Ramakrishnan- 9UTA35

Sruthi K M- 9UTA36

REFERENCE

1 V.SUBRAMANIAN

Associated Head-IT,

Mobile no:919944933092,

Tel :(Dir) 0422 4330111,

(off) 0422 4330330,

E-mail: subbu@roots.co.in/supersubra@gmail.com

2 V.SIVARAMASWAMY Associated Head-IT

Mobile no:9944933091,

Tel :(Dir) 0422 4330111,

(off) 0422 4330330,

E-mail: vsiva@roots.co.in

3 G.BALANSUBRAMANIAM

Company Secretary,

Tel :(Dir) 0422 4330119,

(off) 0422 4330330,

E-mail: gbala@roots.co.in

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to express our deep gratitude to our mentor Mr. S C SHARMA for his involved

interest and motivation which has inspired us to do this project.

We also thank Mr. V. Subramania (Associate Head-IT), Mr. V. Sivaramaswamy (Associate

Head-IT) and Mr. G. Balasubramaniam ( Company Secretary) of ROOTS INDUSTRIES

INDIA LTD., Coimbatore for their coopration and encouragement in completing this project

work successfully.

INTRODUCTION

In a dynamic world that is driven by technology a successful presence depends on the

way new mould that technology to fit popular needs. Indigenous talent, adhering attitude,

courage to accept and learn new things and the simple spark of an idea. That is the genesis of

ROOTS founded by Mr. Ramaswamy. ROOTS Industries Ltd is a leading manufacturer of horns

in India and the 11th largest horn manufacturing company headquartered in Coimbatore-India,

ROOTS has been a dominant player in the manufacture of horns and other products like castings

and industrial cleaning machines. Since its establishment in 1970, ROOTS had a vision and

commitment to produce and deliver quality products adhering to international standards. With its

strong innovative base and commitment to quality, ROOTS industries Ltd have occupied a key

position in both international and domestic market as suppliers to leading OEM and aftermarket.

Similar to products ROOTS has leading edge over competitors on strong quality system base.

Now RIN is the first Indian company and the first horn manufacturing company in the world to

get ISO/TS 16949 certification based on effective implementation on QS 9000 and mediate 6.1

system requirements earlier. RIL has entered into technical collaboration with Robert Bosch, SA

to further enhance the technical competence. ROOTS vision is to become a world class company

manufacturing world class product excelling in human relation.

ROOTS uses SAP ERP software to control all the activities of the company. Using

this software it is easy to adapt quickly and cost effectively to changing business and

markets.ERP solution includes SAP ERP for finance ,HR,operation etc

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ACCESS CONTROL AND SECURITY

In ROOTS Industries India Ltd have an authorized person to take care of “access

control and security”. His job is to assign ‘role’ for the users of SAP software and also control

the use of the software. Role is a set of transaction codes. Role restricts the user to certain fields.

For example, the finance person or the FICO person (as per the terms of SAP) cannot access

details of the material transactions taken care by the person authorized to take care of material

management module in SAP. Each user will have a username and password to have access to

area of transaction. The user has to enter that username and password to login to the specified

screen in SAP. Once he or she logs in, he or she can do his or her work. Anyone other than the

consigned users cannot access the SAP because after three wrong entries of passwords, it will get

locked. After that even the original user cannot login. They even have parameter restriction i.e.

the user is idle for more than 15 minutes, the user will be made to automatically come out of that

screen and the SAP will free the buffer space for other users.

As the internet becomes the primary medium for electronic commerce and messaging, ROOTS

Industries India Ltd need strong security for their internet application. iCert is a set of security

services that enables the use of public key cryptography and digital certificates in distributed

computing system. They are tools of authentication, authorization and encryption in a variety of

internet/intranet application including secure messaging and e-commerce. iCert services allow

ROOTS to establish security domains in which they issue keys and certificates. Within these

domains, it enables the use and management of encryption keys and certificates, key

management, certificate management and policy management. It allows the organization to set

up application security in a way that supports its business needs.

“Transport” is a system which contains three landscapes to be precise, development, quality and

production. Transport means recording of changes. Development means creation of new

products. Quality is the testing of the developed products to verify whether it meets the quality

requirements of the company and the last landscape is production i.e. manufacturing of the

developed and tested product. All the other big organizations have adopted all three landscapes

but ROOTS Industries India Ltd have implemented only two landscapes i.e. development and

production. In development itself they perform the quality testing and then once it is approved

they go for production of the developed horns. In SAP if they have to do any development they

will give “transport” request. The time period for each landscape is maintained by SAP.

ROOTS industries also uses Online Support Service to contact the SAP’s main branch in

Bangalore incase of any technical issues with the software. It can be done only when the router is

on. ROOTS will send a message to the SAP head office regarding the technical problem faced by

the company then SAP technicians will enter the company’s system and fix the problem. SAP

can enter the company’s system only if the company grants permission to do so.

ROOTS industries uses ‘single sign on’ method i.e. When they use the portal in SAP, the users

can access all the systems.

From our study of the security system for usage of SAP software in ROOTS Industries India Ltd

we realize that they have developed a very efficient and effective system. They are maintaining

it in a very effectual way. Due to this exceptional security system, ROOTS always had all their

vital data safe.

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SEARCH MANAGEMENT

In Roots millions of its customers uses internet frequently to check for the best possible

products and services available for them. Now the trick is to make these customers find you

prior to any of your competitor. Here the Search Management is the process of managing all

aspects of the paid and free search results and listing along with managing other areas of

exposure and services offered by today's leading search engines.

Roots company has established its presence in the world web by having its own website. The

website provides the customers mainly with the profile of the company along with the details of

the product supplied by the company. It also provides the links to other organization which

comes under Roots group. The goals company attains by engaging in Search Management are

Increasing the traffic to their website

Increasing the visibility and popularity

The company has developed a search engine friendly website. This helps in business as it create

a presence in the web world so as to reach out to various customers who are trying to gather

information on various products and services, which comes under the company’s supplies.

Search management for the Roots company is not implemented on a wide scale which if done

can make it further effective and efficient .Today’s world has been deeply involved with internet

and the customer base has been growing on second to second basis. In this era, creating an actual

presence has become inevitable for the business and slowly it has realized that branding,

marketing and once in a while monitoring of the website is not going to create the much required

presence in the web world. It is vital in today's world that your business maintains a healthy

internet presence - even if it is not traditionally internet driven; search management is more

important than ever to your success.

Just creating an website is not going to increase the much required online access and sales for

the product and service. It is very much necessary that the business start early and maintain

online presence. The misconception most of the company has is that potential customer will be

able to find them with no trouble and get automatically directed towards their online site.

However this is not true, based on the brick and mortar establishment, if the customer can’t find

you, they will not buy from you. So it is imperative that the companies engage in the various

techniques such as :

Optimize the company’s website with words that people frequently search for.

By creating relevant meta tags, such as title, description, and keyword tags. These

appear in the header of the page and give information to the search engines

without affecting the page's appearance.

By using PPC (pay per click) campaigns, they can place ads on search engine

results pages and pay only when someone clicks on them. This is a great way to

drive targeted traffic to your site.

By building links to other relevant and popular sites. This is an effective way to

get noticed by the search engines.

By continually monitoring their site to modify, add, or delete specific keywords

or copy.

With search engine management, business builds a solid reputation and brand and increase

traffic to the company websites. Better search engine rankings and traffic lead to more potential

sales .Having solid, relevant content and then having that content optimized is the best way to

get noticed by search engines and customers. A commitment to search management can help

ROOTS business succeed in the competitive internet business world.

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CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Content management software helps Roots industries to develop, generate, deliver,

update and achieve text data multimedia information at e-commerce websites. It is very

important in every E-commerce companies to update their data in software and connect with

other companies. Generating and managing catalog content is a main subset of content

management.

In ROOTS INDUSTRIES INDIA LTD, they use SAP ERP package. Here they use

three servers i.e. development server, production or database server and application server. All

data of purchase, sales, invoice, production, job etc are stored in the database hardwares

connected to these servers. Application server is based on database in which there is a buffer

where all the data is stored. This in turn helps in fast access to the buffer. It also reduces the load

of database server and develop, produce, and overview database in application. ROOTS uses

‘application server’ for user load balancing and for distributing the load of users .Production or

database server is used for storage and also acts as application server in its absence. Developing

server is used by the IT developers for programming, configuring and testing purpose. Testing is

done twice in a year. For this service they have a tie up with IBM, which supplies and maintaines

these servers. ROOTS has thirty user licence, so if they want an additional user apart from thirty

users to access SAP they have to go for one more server. There are six modules in SAP. They are

material, quality, production, finance, controlling and plant maintenance. ROOTS Industries

India limited follows five modules except controlling and plant maintenance.

Roots Industries also create daily and monthly backup for their data as a protection

against losing of data in case of sudden system or software failure. Till now they are maintaining

backup of database size 150GB and their daily growing backup is 120MB/day. They use tape

drivers of 400GB capacity to keep monthly backups. Even small tape drives of 34GB are used to

keep RIMS daily backup. 400GB tape drivers are known as Ultrums.

Only ROOTS Industries India limited uses SAP ERP software. Whereas Roots Multiclean

limited uses a separate ERP package which is run by RMCL’s separate servers. More than ten

branches of ROOTS all over India are connected with the servers. ROOTS Casting Private

limited, ROOTS auto product private limited and ROOTS polycraft are using ROOTS integrated

management system (RIMS) web package.

Virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network that is implemented in an additional

software layer on top of an existing larger network for the purpose of creating private scope of

computer communication. VPN is installed by organization to provide remote access to secure

organizational network. At ROOTS VPN is provided by HCL. It is basically for security purpose

and used as a tunnel to access RMCL website. Using a single username and password employess

can access VPN. Rest three companies which does not use VPN, uses LAN network.

Every year audit is done in the company by SAP, Bangalore to check how many login’s

are done under 30 licences. For every licence, they are paying INR 17000 to INR 19000.

Lotus application is used at ROOTS to provides enterprise-grade-email, collaboration

capabilities and custom application platform. It is used for internal and external communication

process i.e. e-mailing.

There is another advanced technology called IRODS (Integrated Rule-Oriented Data

System) which is used for managing large scale data networks. We suggest ROOTS to install this

system so that it will help them to access data easily from different locations across India and it

will also help them to maintain data backup for their future references.

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PAYMENTS:

At ROOTS Industries India Limited, payment process starts once the invoice is raised to

the vendor’s account by the Finance Department and then the payments are released within due

date which is 30 to 40 days. This whole process is done with the help of SAP Application. This

particular responsibility to oversee the payment process through SAP is given to SAP Accounts

Manager. The process is dependent on all other functions in the firm as then only transaction can

be closed by settlement of payments. ROOTS Industries mainly use eCheque as their mode of

payment and in some cases they use account payee counter cheque which is couriered or sent by

post to the payee. Account payee cheque takes time for realisation so companies depend on faster

payment gateways. Two main banks which ROOTS deal with for eCheque facility are State

Bank of India and CITI Bank. ROOTS according to the credit dates allowed by payee, group the

outstanding payments and then feed the information on SAP Application which in turn on due

date reminds and releases eCheque to payee. The banks which are frequently used for payments

are entered in SAP Application as House Banks. ROOTS Finance and Accounts department

decides which creditor account has to be dealt with which bank and then the bank is informed

about the accounts it has to handle as and when SAP Application notifies. Accounts manager

prepares a list of vendors through SAP which is called Vendor’s list. Then, a separate list is

prepared for Vendor’s ageing i.e. the details of payment to be made and it is maintained and

updated on weekly and monthly basis on SAP application.

Process for Account Payee Counter cheque, is that a bank is selected for releasing the payment

and then vendor’s code is entered in SAP which shows the outstandings pending for that vendor.

The accounts manager selects payments to be cleared and the list of outstanding payment details

is sent to the respective bank for issue of cheque. The bank then issues cheque to the vendor

through post or courier. The other payment option which ROOTS follow is eCheque procedure.

Here ROOTS select the payments according to the due date or credit date provided by the

VENDOR. These payments are feeded in SAP.

An eCheque is an electronic document which substitutes the paper document. Digital

signatures can be substituted for handwritten signatures. eCheques pass directly from ROOTS

accounts department to the payee, so that the timing is given preference for payments to the

payee. ROOTS writes an eCheque by structuring an electronic document with the information

legally required to be in a cheque and digitally signs it. The vendor receives the eCheque over

email or web, verifies ROOTS digital signature, writes out a deposit and digitally signs it.

Vendor's bank verifies ROOTS and payee's digital signatures and forwards the cheque for

clearing and settlement. ROOTS bank verifies their digital signature and debits the account. Like

paper cheques, eCheques can bounce or be returned, for stop payment instructions, insufficient

funds or accounts being closed. Digital signatures on every eCheque can be verified at all points,

while in paper cheques, handwritten signatures can be verified at only one point.

Another effective and time saving payment tool which ROOTS Industries India Limited

are going to follow in few months is Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS). It is used for

immediate payment which is affect in party account within few minutes at very minimal charges.

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WORK FLOW MANAGEMENT

Roots Industries LTD uses SAP ERP application to manage all information and

functions of the company i.e. the whole work flow of the company is controlled by this software.

Here, Work flow is divided into five modules. They are material management, quality

module, production module, sales and distribution module, and financial module (FICO). All

these modules have different steps so that each and every step has to be satisfied to proceed with

the next step.

MATERIAL MANAGEMENT

Here the first step is to generate a purchase requisition by material purchase department.

This is then sanctioned by authorized person i.e the manager of the company. Once the manager

realizes the purchase requisition or quotation the second step is to place the order. Then on the

mentioned date vendor will release the order.

Purchase requisition authorization place the order release the

material

This is then followed by quality module

QUALITY MODULE

The main purpose of this module is to check the quality of supplied material. At

ROOTS this is done by using sampling method. Here the acceptance and rejection of the

supplied material is done. If the quality of the material is good, then it is accepted else will be

rejected. Only when the quality is accepted, they will proceed with the next module which is

production module.

Accepted production module

Quality

Rejected end the process/ restart the process again

PRODUCTION MODULE

This module comprises of Production Planning. Here the first step is to generate the bill

of material which shows the list of raw materials required for manufacturing goods.

There are 2 main restrictions in production planning:

1. Before the production process starts, confirmation is given that all raw materials are in

place. If its in place confirmation will be given. In case of rejection i.e. either one of the

material is missing, then according to SAP package the step cannot be taken further.

2. Routing should be done. It explains place (where the production is going to take place),

time (how many hours it will take to finish production cycle), shift (three shifts, each

shift 8hrs).

All these are calculated using SAP.

When these two restrictions are satisfied, production cycle is started. Once the cycle

gets over next step is to check the quality of the produced goods. This is known as “in

house” quality in SAP terms. If the quality is accepted, then next module begins.

Bill of material confirm raw material availability routing production

quality check

SALES AND DISTRIBUTION

Sales and distribution can be divided into four steps:

1. sales order: getting order from the customers

2. preparing invoice: which indicates the product ,quality, and price of the product

3. maintaining invoice: maintaining invoice for billing

4. billing:generates bill

Here they mainly focus on customization i.e. producing goods according to

customer’s requirement and then distribution or delivery.

Sales order preparing invoice maintaining invoice billing

FINANCE MODULE (FICO in SAP)

Cost of each and every activity will be automatically registered in this module. It has two

methods

1. MTS: Here production is done first and then produced goods are distributed to the

customer. ROOTS follow this method.

2. MTO: Here the first step is to get orders from the customer. And then according to

the orders Production and distribution is done.

MTS Production Distribution

MTO Get orders Production Distribution

From our study we understood that ROOTS follow a well organized work flow

system by using SAP ERP software, as a key element in coordinating all activities in

their workings.

FLOWCHART

WORK FLOW MANAGEMENT

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MATERIAL MANAGEMENT

QUALITY MODULE

PRODUCTION MODULE

SALES AND DISTRIBUTION

FINANCE MODULE