Cofiasa Reduces Retail Check out Time by 87% with GO-Global

‍About Cofiasa

Founded in 1971, Cofiasa produces steel products for a wide variety of industries, including public and private construction, blacksmithing, agriculture, and manufacturing. The company headquarters and manufacturing facility is in Chihuahua, Mexico, with 47 regional facilities throughout Mexico, each designed to serve its local market. Learn more about Cofiasa at https://cofiasa.com.mx/.

The Challenge

Cofiasa is the largest supplier of steel products in Northwest Mexico, selling hundreds of different products to government organizations, private and public companies, and individuals. Over time, the company built a distribution network of regional retail facilities complemented by a large fleet of delivery vehicles and a strong commitment to customer service.

In 2006, Cofiasa implemented ERP software to better serve customers buying from the retail outlets and to manage the business. In addition to the direct sales personnel in the retail outlets, the ERP was also used by the Purchasing, Accounting, HR, Credit, Auditing, Marketing, Treasury, and Systems departments. The software was installed locally on each employee’s computer, which connected via VPN to a centralized corporate database.

Implementing the ERP system allowed the company to achieve a holistic view of the business, better manage inventory and manufacturing, and most importantly, provide great customer service. When the ERP was implemented, Cofiasa had 30 retail outlets. However, as Cofiasa grew and added employees and retail outlets located further and further from the home office, the ERP’s performance began to slow, frustrating company employees, especially the retail salespeople.

Leonel Mendoza, IT Project Manager at Cofiasa, noted, “At its worst, when Cofiasa had expanded to 40 retail outlets, it took 5 minutes to check out one retail customer. This was definitely not the great buying experience that we wanted to provide!”

The Solution: GO-Global

Concerned about losing retail customers, and wanting to improve employee satisfaction, Cofiasa’s IT department looked for a solution that would improve the ERP’s performance and still allow the company to centralize and secure corporate data.

Cofiasa’s IT team learned about GO-Global via an internet search, downloaded a free trial of the software, and ran a proof of concept using the retail outlets as the test case. The first item they noted was an impressive improvement in application performance in the retail stores when the ERP was published using GO-Global. IT also realized that GO-Global’s application publishing approach, where end users get a local application experience even though they are accessing the ERP on a server located in the corporate data center, meant that users had virtually no learning curve when using GO-Global and could easily and quickly transition to the new application delivery system.  

Cofiasa worked with software distributor Soluciones y Gestiones De Ti SAC, located in Lima, Peru, to purchase and implement GO-Global.  

When determining which department would be first to use GO-Global to run the ERP, the choice was obvious. Said Leonel, “Of course the direct sales team went first to solve the issue of long checkouts. Then we rolled out GO-Global department by department over two years.”

The Results

GO-Global immediately improved Cofiasa’s biggest pain point related to running the ERP—slow response time in the retail outlets. Leonel stated, “The direct sales team saw customer check out time drop from 5 minutes to 40 seconds. But then employees in other departments reported that the ERP simply works faster when deployed using GO-Global. That’s a benefit we didn’t expect but are very pleased with!”

Currently over half of Cofiasa’s employees utilize the corporate ERP to do their jobs. Happily, the IT team is no longer concerned about customer or employee dissatisfaction with such a mission-critical application. Leonel concludes, “We can continue to open new retail outlets and provide quick customer check-in and check-out, no matter how many Cofiasa employees are using the ERP system.”

“We can continue to open new retail outlets and provide quick customer check-in and check-out, no matter how many Cofiasa employees are using the ERP system.” Leonel Mendoza, IT Project Manager, Cofiasa

‍About GO-Global

GO-Global enables organizations to publish Windows® applications from any public, private, or hybrid cloud, to any device that supports a browser. Using GO-Global, IT can deliver Windows applications at up to 40% less than Microsoft® RDS and up to 70% less that VDI solutions from Citrix® and VMware®. Despite its low cost, GO-Global delivers enterprise-level scalability but is easy to install, configure, and use, with considerably less technology overhead required for implementation. For more information, visit  www.graphon.com.