When Navitas Semiconductor, a publicly listed next-generation power-semiconductor company based in California, needed a scalable solution to manage their inventory and support their product ramp, they chose Tensoft SemiOps. Watch this video case study to learn how Tensoft SemiOps supported their unique supply chain needs and streamlined their internal processes.
Video Transcript:
Todd Glickman, Senior VP of Finance & Accounting:
Navitas Semiconductor was founded to change the world and right now we are the only pure-play, next generation semiconductor company in the world where we are focusing on developing gallium nitride and silicon carbide products that are both reliable and are energy efficient. Before Tensoft, we were really operating as a company within Excel. We had a couple of products. We tried to value our inventory in Excel spreadsheets, and we quickly understood that wasn’t a scalable solution.
Mary Ann Miraran, Senior Planning Manager:
When we started Navitas, it was a lean organization and I was just the sole person here in the supply chain doing the purchasing, order fulfillment, inventory tracking, all the transactions needed. So prior Tensoft there’s a lot of Excel management of data. Everything, customer orders is in Excel, inventory is in Excel, lot tracking is in Excel. All the traceability, it will take us time to figure out what lot number or wafer lot number we use because we are all using Excel.
Todd Glickman, Senior VP of Finance & Accounting:
During the search process, we evaluated all ERP MRP solutions in the market, which included more well-known names in the market such as NetSuite or Epicor. But what we were really looking for was a solution that can come right outside the box and need zero customization. As a semiconductor company, our supply chain is different than other companies out there where it’s a reverse bill of material. We start with one and we eventually go to many different pieces.
When we came to Tensoft, we found the perfect solution as the flow of processes was already built including inventory management, sales order processing, which put us in a great position to implement the software quickly with limited IT resources internally.
The implementation went quite quickly. It was on time and provided extensive training to not only me but my team so we could quickly move forward and be focused on running the business and driving growth rather than implementing a system.
Mary Ann Miraran, Senior Planning Manager:
It took us just a week to set up our BOM, the workflow, the processes, all the entities we need in the system. After less than 80 days, we were able to manage the sales order within Tensoft, we’re able to track the inventories, the genealogies and it was just perfect, give us a lot of time prior mass production.
Todd Glickman, Senior VP of Finance & Accounting:
The great part about Tensoft is they facilitated supplier integrations and what the integrations provided us was an opportunity to import data seamlessly.
Mary Ann Miraran, Senior Planning Manager:
For planners, the feature that they like the most is the WIP integration and the Paypoint integration. These are supplier integrations with our OSATs because we are a fabless semiconductor. We don’t own a manufacturing line. So it’s important for us to track the inventory almost real time even if we are not seeing the physical lot.
SemiOps really helped us in providing the updated inventory that the planners can use for demand fulfillment. It’s easy for us to track what lot number we use, when did we ship it, what customer received it and also for the inventory. Tensoft was able to integrate our system with our OSAT system through B2B where the Paypoint and WIP were integrated. We don’t need to go through OSATs excel file of WIP reports or go through a PDF version of invoice and packing list to understand what they have finished and what we need to pay for them. We just need to take a quick look on the data and just click one button for us to do the transaction as opposed to a lot of data entry and a lot of checking prior to receiving transaction.
Justin Staniorski, Sales Operations Analyst:
Getting used to DemandOps in Tensoft was pretty straightforward compared to other systems I’ve used. Within DemandOps, there are several features that we found to be very useful in setting up all of our parts and businesses. Specifically, I found the part set up to be very useful because it was able to align marketing parts with internal part numbers, with customer part numbers and all these can be mapped together. You can set similar or different descriptions for all of these, and those descriptions are directly pushed onto any invoices or packing lists or anything related to shipments of those products. So, it made a customization of all those very, very useful.
Mary Ann Miraran, Senior Planning Manager:
DemandOps help us track our orders in real time, everything that we shipped. The inventory automatically is netted out of the available on hand. And also it let us track the revenue projections as it does the records of all the shipments and what we are planning to ship on a certain period.
Seikoh Matsuo, Accounting Manager:
To understand how Tensoft works, we spent some time running reports and make sure we understand how data flows from one to another. We always do cross-check from Tensoft to Business Central and it never works incorrectly. It’s always correct, always right. So we can always rely on Tensoft calculation and integration.
Mary Ann Miraran, Senior Planning Manager:
For the WIP integration, what the planners like is they know what would be the ship out dates for every open PO we have on the OSAT side which helped us. It saves a lot of time because WIP reports for some of those that are coming from either you download it from their system, or you get it from your e-mail which is coming in Excel.
Justin Staniorski, Sales Operations Analyst:
We can pull backlog reports, shipment reports for analytics and it helps us in general to streamline our customer quote to shipment process.
Mary Ann Miraran, Senior Planning Manager:
The booking billing backlog report is very helpful, not just for me, but also for the sales team. That shows all the history in terms of our shipments, part numbers, quantities, even the price, who’s the customer who took it and also the projections in the future like on a certain period we would know on the billing and backlog what is our revenue projection.
Todd Glickman, Senior VP of Finance & Accounting:
So originally, we looked at the Tensoft system to manage our inventory. That was only step one of the process. Now we look at Tensoft to not only manage inventory but manage the cost and having real time information available to us especially as a public company. And one of the features that Tensoft has is, it integrates seamlessly with Power BI. Power BI has served as a platform for us to use dashboards and so now we are providing real time data to not only in the finance department but to a whole C-Suite so they can quickly make decisions without checking with other departments. The finance, accounting, and operations team can use Tensoft because it doesn’t require any customization. That has allowed us to save a lot of money and as Tensoft upgrades we upgrade with it.
Mary Ann Miraran, Senior Planning Manager:
For the supply chain transactions, when we became publicly listed, being in Tensoft is like a preparation for all the requirements of the auditors will ask. Like it just shows all the transparency in the transactions that we needed to run the business and all the questions that the auditors find can easily be explained with all the transaction and records we have in the system.
Todd Glickman, Senior VP of Finance & Accounting:
One of the great features about Tensoft is scalability. While our transactions are doubling year over year as we drive revenue growth to double year over year, we have not had to add many resources internally. We recently acquired another company and that’s always a concern with integration, trying to integrate a company as quickly as possible. But with Tensoft we were able to do that integration very quickly. Similar to the implementation process, the integration process was a matter of weeks rather than months.
Justin Staniorski, Sales Operations Analyst:
Before the acquisition of Genesic by Navitas, there were several things in our process that needed to be improved. We were using Google Sheets at the time and although the system did work well for us at the level we were at, as business has grown under the acquisition, it has been impossible to keep track and manage all of that data in the same way within Google Sheets as is in DemandOps. It’s much easier to keep track of all that DemandOps just because it’s all in one place and all the transactions happening in real time.
Todd Glickman, Senior VP of Finance & Accounting:
Navitas has been working with Tensoft for over 6 years and the reason why we are still working with Tensoft today, yes, the product is great, but it’s really the people and the customer service that’s there. When we run into problems, we know that we can depend on Tensoft to solve them quickly and efficiently.
Justin Staniorski, Sales Operations Analyst:
I would recommend Tensoft to any fabless semiconductor companies looking for a new ERP system as it’s very straightforward, easy to learn, has streamlined many of our internal processes and overall is the right tool for the job.