Interview with Prolog Titanium Corporation Co., Ltd.

Full interview

BRID: Could you tell us about the beginnings of Prolog Titanium Corporation Co., Ltd.?

Khun Thanaphol: We operate a full-service business producing and distributing machinery made from titanium material — the only one in Thailand and the largest in South East Asia.

BRID: In what industries can titanium be used?

Khun Thanaphol: Today, Thai industry applies titanium in producing machinery to extend service life and reduce maintenance costs, which is popular in many industries — from the food industry to the automotive industry, the electronics industry to the petrochemical industry.

These are the customers who decide to change the machinery in their own production processes, from ordinary stainless steel to titanium, for superior durability and to reduce maintenance costs for the organisation, leading to concrete production efficiency.

BRID: What is the organisation’s success factor?

Khun Thanaphol: Our Prolog company actually started as a trading company in 2006 (B.E. 2549). To this day we’ve travelled a path of more than 17 years, transforming ourselves from a trading company that bought and sold titanium material into a manufacturer, distributor, and stockist.

Today we can provide full service, from sourcing raw materials, designing the engineering to process them into machinery, all the way to installation for the customer.

From this success in providing full service, we can reduce the cost of changing machinery to titanium significantly,

leading to decisions about value or feasibility with the customer, making the decision to change machinery to titanium easy.

This is one of our successes, which has led titanium to be applied in more industries than in the past and gain widespread popularity across many industries.

BRID: What was the turning point that made you start seeking an ERP system?

Khun Thanaphol: The importance of the organisation’s sustainable growth — the key is that we need to have complete functions, every function.

At Prolog itself we start from the sales function. We have a sales department responsible for customers both domestic and overseas, all the way to the design engineering department, the production department, quality inspection, and many other departments.

It’s very important to set up the system and set up the workflow correctly according to international standards. Each department needs aligned KPIs, which lead to the organisation’s main strategy, so the organisation can achieve a single goal.

During the company’s growth over the past 17 years, one of the hearts of our success is managing efficiently.

It’s very important that executives receive complete data, because all of the company’s resources need to be used for maximum benefit.

So bringing an Enterprise Resource Planning Program into the organisation is another heart of our organisation’s success, in bringing all the resources we have to analyse, allocate, and use for maximum benefit.

That’s one of the origins of why we chose to implement ERP in our organisation.

BRID: Why did you choose the PlanetOne ERP system?

Khun Thanaphol: The importance of the organisation’s sustainable growth — the key is that we need to have complete functions, every function.

From deciding to implement, we came to know PlanetOne Service, one of the ERP software providers that can be seen as one of the most expert and longest-established companies in Thailand, at a price I’d say is a very reasonable price compared with ERP from foreign camps.

After trying it, we found that PlanetOne’s features are, I admit, easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to access for users at every level, whether operational level, up to engineer level or executives themselves.

Currently our company has expanded its market into exporting the titanium products we produce. So the key to exporting is producing at the most correct and accurate cost.

So PlanetOne’s ERP system plays a very important part in letting us genuinely analyse production costs.

BRID: What functions do you use in the PlanetOne ERP system?

Khun Thanaphol: The importance of the organisation’s sustainable growth — the key is that we need to have complete functions, every function.

At Prolog we’ve implemented nearly every module PlanetOne provides to our company, not excepting the human-resources module, because one of our organisation’s important expenses is personnel expenses.

Here we can reflect this in the part of the cost used in production, to give us the potential to compete in the export arena against competitors from abroad, especially China.

We’ve already proven that our Thailand can produce export products at an efficient, worthwhile cost, no different from prices from China, with PlanetOne software that’s modern and can be used to cover every module.

So it’s another choice for business owners — let’s together support software made by Thais, who have expertise and long experience in our home industrial arena.

Besides having software expertise, PlanetOne also has a team with expertise and experience in implementation.

Because actually, when many SME companies start implementing ERP, I believe more than fifty percent have a chance of failing — by having too many requirements and trying to customise the program too much.

BRID: What impressed you about the PlanetOne ERP system?

Khun Thanaphol: With PlanetOne’s understanding of Thai SMEs, they help control the implementation scope to stay within the correct and proper frame, with no implementation or customisation beyond what’s necessary, which could be a cause of SMEs not succeeding in implementing ERP.

In case a user gets stuck with a problem using the program, PlanetOne has a JTrac system that lets every user report problems into the system. We get a reply within 1 day, including follow-up and resolving the problem to the end.

In addition, when there’s an urgent case, after we report the case into JTrac, the PlanetOne team also remotes in via Anydesk to help solve the problem at that moment.

This lets us implement or operate the system continuously and seamlessly, which is another strength in PlanetOne’s service that I think is superior to every competitor in the market now.

Our Prolog Titanium Corporation has been a PlanetOne customer entering its 5th year this year. I still remember the first day we started implementing ERP — we spent two years implementing until success.

We’re proud to be one of the SMEs able to bring an ERP system into management across every dimension. Now we’ve used PlanetOne to close the books entering the third year.

To this day we still continue implementing new modules, for example the module called budgetary, to use in controlling profit management for maximum benefit to the organisation.

Throughout the time we’ve implemented,

one of PlanetOne’s strengths is the implementer team, which besides having knowledge and understanding of the PlanetOne software itself, also has knowledge and understanding of the SME business or customer.

They can give beneficial advice, and bring maximum benefit to business owners in implementing efficiently and achieving the maximum result.

Whenever a problem arises, there’s also the JTrac system that lets users go in and track the problem and get an answer quickly, in time to resolve the problem in time.

The important thing is having effective data for executives to use in decision-making. So using a manual system — whether documents, Excel, or a database that’s separated by department and can’t be integrated — would be a significant problem that makes SMEs unable to receive data important to management in time.

That’s the significant reason why Enterprise Resource Planning is important for an organisation that needs decisiveness in decision-making and wants efficiency in management.

Our Prolog Titanium Corporation sees the benefit of management and the benefit of bringing ERP to apply in the organisation, so the organisation can grow sustainably.

Actually, titanium products are closer to us than we think. Behind me is one of our company’s products, where we take scrap titanium and recycle and rework it into a product used to decorate homes and restaurants.

We have the concept of B C G — Bio, Circulation, and Green — in recycling leftover material back to create value added, giving it a price and added value, turning it into art that can be used to decorate your business.

This year, our Prolog Titanium Cooperation has plans to bring the business public, and we have a partner in PlanetOne as an important partner in developing our ERP system to take the organisation public.