Kingslake iTea Forum 2013 brings tea professionals together

Kingslake in partnership with Infor USA, hosted the Kingslake iTea Forum recently in Colombo.

Over 75 tea professionals representing the cream of the local tea industry, including tea exporters and brokers, participated. Dr. S. Dharmavasan, Chairman of Kingslake spoke on the shift in IT that we were witnessing where everything was progressing to mobile and portable formats and Cloud based infrastructure. He further discussed on how this shift could provide innumerable opportunities to the tea industry, by taking advantage of this situation and also how businesses could progress to a new level.

Mohan Mendis, Marketing Consultant of Heritage Teas, spoke on how technology could be used to gain market share in the current environment, where beverages were battling for quenching the consumer’s palate and thirst. Using a number of examples from various beverage industries, he said how modern technology was being applied to create new products, based on shifts in consumer behavior and thus how it was possible to increase market share.

Director of Finlays Colombo Romesh Moraes, conducted his presentation on Value Addition, emphasized the fact that Value equals Happiness and that Happiness equals meeting Emotional and Functional needs and how ERP creates great value and wellness to a company by allowing them to zoom into facts at any point and see where they were currently and thereby strategise their future moves. He thanked IT specialists both at Kingslake and Finlays, for making this possible for the Finlays Board and Share holders.

Ajith Abeyawardena, Project Manager of Qualitea Ceylon, spoke on the selection of an ERP System, including establishing a team, preparation and evaluation. He went on to say why they chose Infor SyteLine and Kingslake for their ERP solutions and ended with a quote from Charles Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent, but the one that is the most responsive to change.”

Niren Ranasinghe, Director of the Ranfer Group, presented ‘Change or Transformation’ – how, in the implementation of an ERP system, change management could provide a systematic and effective approach to dealing with the numerous changes that a company and its individuals encounter. Just about to go ‘Live’ with the SyteLine ERP solution, he said that 99% of the business would be on this ERP.

Sumith Jayawickrama, General Manager of Basilur Tea, spoke of how his company uses Kingslake’s Tea solution based on Infor Syteline, to optimise production and manage market dynamics of smaller order sizes and greater pack sizes to cater to the modern day tea consumers' varying needs. Jayawickrama who had worked with Kingslake in implementing the software, both during his tenure at MJF and now at Basilur, along with his experience of having worked overseas, said he had seen many internationally renowned ERP products, but stated that Kingslake’s Tea Solution provided the best fit for the Tea Industry.

M. A. Sheriffdeen, Principal Business Consultant at Kingslake, gave an introduction to the Kingslake Tea System, illustrating how it could help those at every level of the tea process and demonstrated the various interfaces of their different solutions.

Explaining the reasons for the Kingslake iTea Forum, Duleep Fernando, CEO Kingslake, said, “having partnered with many clients in the Tea Industry for the past 20 years, providing them business solutions based on IT, we appreciate that the Industry would benefit immensely if they got together to share their experiences with each other, learning new ways on how IT could help the industry to turn into a more robust, profitable and greater worldwide force, thereby increasing market share and earnings benefiting Sri Lanka.”

There was a lot of interest shown by the audience when Ming.le, Infor’s new collaboration platform that is integrated to the SyteLine ERP, was demonstrated. The event concluded with High Tea, giving the participants a chance to interact with each other.

Kingslake has been providing software solutions to the tea industry since its inception in 1994. Using creative and practical solutions, they have effectively resolved challenges faced by their tea clients in order to ensure that their work flow was smooth, dependable and profitable. Thus Plantations, Brokers, Manufacturers, Exporters, Shippers, Retailers and Buyers all achieve business benefits with Kingslake’s iTea Solutions.