Mizuno USA, based in Norcross, Georgia, might have a big
parent company in Japan, but it operates independently in
the United States with just 300 employees generating US$180
million in annual revenue. It sells equipment for golf, baseball,
softball, volleyball, and running, and its challenge was to grow
the business while maintaining high levels of service.
Mizuno implemented JD Edwards (now part of Oracle) in
1998 to replace a legacy ERP system. The company went with a
major vendor to meet its specific order and inventory management requirements: experienced
golfers want custom clubs, and
Mizuno offers custom club configurations built from its inventory
of standard parts. Mizuno buyers
can choose the length, shaft, lie,
loft, and grip for their clubs, and
JD Edwards offered a configurator
solution that made this possible.
“At that time, we had had the
No. 1 iron on the PGA tour for
eight years in a row, so we were
really trying to find a sustainable
point of differentiation from our
competitors, especially in the high-end golf market,” says Keith Neely,
vice president of information
technology and customer support, Mizuno. “What appealed
most to us about the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application
was the product configurator [JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
Configurator]. This tool allowed us to take our product specifications along with the knowledge necessary to assemble specific
club makeups, and build it into the software,” he says. “Prior to
using the configurator, this information existed only on paper
and in the minds of our highly experienced shop floor personnel. Now, at the point of order entry, we can tell a customer
whether we can personalize a set of irons in order to meet their
specifications. We now know whether a particular loft and lie
combination can support the head weight of a specific driver.
The configurator solution was key to our go-live, and at that
particular time, we didn’t see any other ERP applications that
had the flexibility of the JD Edwards solution.”
The configurator solution is a great example of why Mizuno
has captured so much value from its information systems investment: the operating units are heavily involved in designing and
using the systems. “Most of the work we’re doing is with the
business itself,” says Bill Franklin, vice president of planning
and development at CSS International, in Charleston, South
Carolina, which worked with Mizuno on the implementation.
Every feature is something that Mizuno wants and needs to run
its operation better, not something pushed down from on high.
But although the business units drove the system design,
Mizuno’s management realized that the Oracle system was
designed to fit best practices in business operations. It
decided to use the base applications as a guide to organize
its administrative functions. Where the company differed, it
had a choice: it could continue with its current practices and
customize the Oracle system, or it could see if the system’s
built-in best practices made more sense to follow. “Our system
is 95 percent pristine,” Neely says. “We brought standardization to the front end of the business,” and that allowed the
company to increase its efficiencies while growing revenues.
Limiting customization also makes
“Now, at the point of order upgrades simpler, and Neely’s team
uses Oracle’s Entity Relationship
entry, we can tell a customer Compare tools to help. “Those tools
whether we can personalize are amazing, and they are part of
the core software now,” he says.
a set of irons in order to meet Mizuno also standardized pro-
their specifications. . . . The cesses among its four business units. By integrating order entry, inven-
configurator solution was key tory management, purchasing, and
accounting, Mizuno saw efficiencies
to our go-live.” right from the start. “From an opera-
—Keith Neely, Vice President tions perspective, an item is an item
Information Technology and Customer Support is an item,” Neely explains. “We
Mizuno USA need to price it, pick it, pack it, and
ship it no matter if it is used by a
softball player or a runner. One of
our goals was to standardize item setup across business units in
order to make it easy for the distribution staff to handle ship-
ment and for the customer service team to handle inquiries.”
Mizuno realized even greater efficiencies around cross-functional processes. “Analyzing the points of integration within
the system, or the ‘handoffs,’ forced the operations departments
to talk to each other,” Neely says. For example, if a salesperson
overrides a price at order entry, the accounting department is
notified right away, which eliminates the need to wrap up loose
ends at the end of the accounting period. “That’s what led to the
majority of our savings,” he says.
The leverage has been tremendous. Since completing the
Oracle conversion in 2000, Mizuno has gone from 220 employees to 340 and from US$77 million in revenue to US$180
million. The order cycle has been cut from seven days to two.
Receivable days sales outstanding (or DSOs) have gone down
20 percent, because Mizuno can price and invoice correctly. The
call center staff has remained steady at 16 people, because they
can answer more calls more quickly and more accurately. The
company’s total IT staff has just 11 people, only 4 of whom are
dedicated to Oracle support.
Neely encourages staffers to participate in users groups,
including the Quest International Users Group. As a result, “We
have a network of business process owners from around the
company,” he says, and it is the businesspeople, in addition to
