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SiRF Technology, Inc. was founded in February 1995 to bring global positioning system (GPS) technology and other wireless innovations to a wide range of consumer applications. The company has extensive experience in GPS, spread-spectrum radio frequency (RF), semiconductor, software and communications technologies. Operating as a fabless* communications IC company with an intellectual property-licensing model, SiRF is able to deliver solutions that will serve high-growth markets such as consumer GPS navigation and wireless communications. SiRF’s vision is to bring location awareness to virtually everything that moves. With three generations of GPS product families on the market and strategic relationships with industry leaders such as Aisin AW, Borg, Clarion, Conexant, Sony Ericsson, Hitachi, Intel, Motorola, Matsushita Group, NEC, Nokia and NTT DoCoMo, SiRF is driving GPS into mainstream consumer platforms. The challenge
As a fabless semiconductor company in a high-growth and technically advanced industry SiRF’s primary objective was to buy a system that would scale with them as their revenues increased and as they aggressively grew their business through strategic
acquisitions. In addition, it was important to them that they “did it right the first time coming out of the gate” instead of buying multiple systems over the course of the company’s lifecycle. Finally, a quick 6-month implementation was also a strategic
objective in that it helped them demonstrate a quick ROI while not causing any disruptions to their business as they continued to expand their operations.
The solution
SiRF selected IFS based on IFS’ understanding of their business and knowledge of the semiconductor industry as well as IFS Applications’ capabilities to support business critical features and functions. These include key features like initiating wafer
starts, tracking outside processes, recording costs, variances, and yields as well as allowing integration for SiRF’s many suppliers in an end-to-end supply chain solution. SiRF’s selection of IFS was also based on low cost of ownership, fast ROI, proven
technology, scalability and ease of use. SiRF was impressed by how flexible IFS was in working to solve business problems, listening to SiRF rather than trying to dictate terms and squeezing the company into an IFS “straitjacket”. SiRF found that IFS
offered greater breadth of functionality integrated in a single common database and in one tool that was developed and supported by a single vendor.
Implementation
Phase 1 of the implementation took less than six months to roll out. This included most of the core areas of the software: financials, engineering, manufacturing, order management, purchasing, distribution, document management and business modeler. Phase
2 addressed web portals, SFA and CRM. IFS provided a core team of four part-time consultants while SiRF provided a project manager, an IS resource, and one developer. Not only was the project below budget and on time, but also the system has not had a
hiccup since it went live. Ian Chronister, IS Director for SiRF, comments, “The IFS implementation was the smoothest implementation our team has experienced. The system has had no unscheduled downtime and required minimal support—it just works!” IFS
provides outsourced DBA support, but SiRF manages daily maintenance with a staff of two IT resources.
Benefits
The greatest tangible benefit SiRF has achieved with IFS is within their “design in” process. The majority of SiRF’s finished goods are IC chips. But each chip may be designed for a specific device, whether it is a cell phone, automobile navigation
system, or other GPS enabled solution. In order to ‘design in’ their products into an OEM, sales, engineering, customer service and manufacturing must all work together to ensure a successful process. Prior to IFS Applications this was a long process full
of overlap in effort. Today this process is much faster and seamless to the OEM customer. IFS Applications provides SiRF with full product life cycle capabilities, using the modules within project management, engineering and PDM. This has perhaps added
the most significant impact to SiRF’s business. Users feel the system is easy to use, easy to set up, and easy to learn. Ian Chronister adds, “ This is often overstated or overlooked in most implementations. However, IFS Applications is one of the few ERP
Applications that truly delivers.” Ian Chronister concludes, “The component nature of IFS allows SiRF to choose only the modules that we need to support our current business processes. If our business model changes, we can easily add additional enterprise or e-business functionality,
one component at a time, without starting over.”
Software
IFS Financials
IFS Manufacturing
IFS Distribution
IFS Engineering
IFS/Document Management
IFS Business Modeler
IFS/Project Management
Hardware
Architecture utilizing Dell hardware.
Unix, NT and Windows 2000 to support the database and multiple application servers.
*Fabless
(without fab) refers to the business methodology of outsourcing the manufacturing of silicon wafers, which hundreds of semiconductor companies have adopted. Fabless companies focus on the design, development and marketing of their products and form
alliances with silicon wafer manufacturers, or foundries.
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