Case Study / Port & Logistics
Merciglobal Cloud ERP at ICD Dhannad
Inland Container Depot, Dhannad — Central India's first private port.
ICD Dhannad
Central India's first private Inland Container Depot — and the region's first road-based ICD.
ICD Dhannad is Central India's first private Inland Container Depot, and the region's first road-based ICD. Located in Dhannad, it provides the fastest road linkage between Indore and Mumbai — a transit time of just 36 hours — via a dedicated fleet of GPS-enabled vehicles available around the clock.
Today, ICD Dhannad operates across Indore, Ratlam, Mumbai, Mandideep, Hazira, and Nagpur with a team of more than 200 dedicated employees and a fleet of 105 trailers, supported by warehouses, cool-chain facilities, and repair and maintenance units. The depot serves marquee clients including PNG, Grasim Industries, and Volvo, and has recently expanded into railway operations.
— Ajay Agrawal | Founder and Managing Director, ICD Dhannad
Employees Supported
Fleet Trailers Managed
Staff Reduction (IT/Ops)
ERP Go-Live Year
A fragmented operational stack
Despite years of investment in technology, ICD Dhannad's operational management remained fragmented. The organisation relied on a patchwork of tools — a custom-built ERP, Excel, Word, Tally, and manual registers — spread across departments. The result was duplication of effort, inconsistent data, compliance risks, and significant overhead in IT infrastructure and manpower.
Pain Points
- Non-integrated processes across Import, Export, Transport, and Finance departments
- Operational delays caused by manual hand-offs between teams
- Different software for each department with no central data source
- Limited management visibility into real-time operations
- Manual reporting consuming significant manpower with inherent error risk
- Customer support hampered by siloed information
- Invoicing errors and GST/TDS compliance burden from manual accounting
- Heavy and costly on-premise IT infrastructure — servers, UTM, antivirus, MS licensing
Each challenge, directly resolved
Merciglobal Cloud ERP — a single, centralised platform
Merciglobal Cloud ERP was deployed at ICD Dhannad from 2016 in a phased implementation, replacing every legacy tool with a single, centralised cloud platform. The ERP spans the complete operational lifecycle — Imports, Exports, Transportation, Customer Support, Invoicing, Taxation, Accounting — with HRMS added later as an extension module.
Cloud Infrastructure — Zero On-Premise Overhead
Migrating to Merciglobal's secured Linux cloud servers eliminated the need for every piece of on-site IT infrastructure.
- Primary and DR servers decommissioned
- UTM/Firewall hardware removed
- Traditional desktops replaced with Thin Clients
- MS Windows replaced with Ubuntu
- MS Office replaced with WPS Office
- Anti-virus, NAS backup, and MS licensing costs eliminated
- Automated nightly backup on secured cloud servers
Financial Management & Compliance Automation
Integrated accounting, GST, TDS/TCS, and invoicing modules automated the entire financial cycle — from operations data capture through to ledger posting, statutory registers, and final accounts. Digital signing of documents replaced manual compliance workflows. Audit control locks and validation rules eliminated human error at critical junctures.
Process Integration & Elimination of Redundancy
Custom-designed modules replaced individual departmental software. Data previously scattered across Excel files, Word documents, and separate ERP instances was consolidated into a single structured database, with validation rules preventing duplication and cross-departmental workflows synchronised in real time.
Alerts, Analytics & Automated Reporting
Merciglobal's built-in BI system provides management with event-based alerts, approval workflows, performance targets, and cross-departmental analytics — all in a unified view. Automated scheduled reports replaced manual compilation, improving accuracy and freeing significant analyst bandwidth.
RPA — Robotic Process Automation
After deep process analysis, Merciglobal implemented RPA across ICD Dhannad's most repetitive manual operations: scheduled report dispatch, multi-checkpoint data validation, and trigger-based workflows. RPA has proven to be a transformative force in sustaining day-to-day operational velocity.
End-to-End Import & Export Automation
The complete container lifecycle — from IGM receipt through delivery, warehousing, and transportation — was automated across all stages. Customs department personnel work directly within the system, eliminating paper-based and offline processes.
Compounding operational and financial returns
The phased implementation of Merciglobal Cloud ERP delivered:
IT operations workforce reduced from 62 staff to 18 — a reduction of over 70%
Entire on-premise server and IT infrastructure decommissioned — zero recurring hardware costs
Licensing costs for Windows, MS Office, and antivirus completely eliminated
Manual invoicing errors eliminated through rule-based automated capture
GST, TDS, TCS, and audit compliance automated and consistently maintained
Management now operates with real-time BI dashboards and automated alerts
Cross-departmental data accuracy maintained through centralised, validated workflows
HRMS module further reduced manpower costs and improved HR efficiency
ICD Dhannad expanded operations to 6 cities and into the railway sector — supported by the ERP backbone
"ICD Dhannad today stands stronger than ever with technology at the core of our operations. Merciglobal Cloud ERP has been the single system that made it possible — from removing our entire IT infrastructure to automating compliance, invoicing, and reporting."
— Ajay Agrawal | Founder & Managing Director, ICD Dhannad
Built for operational complexity
Merciglobal Systems Pvt. Ltd. is a cloud-based ERP and customised software company serving clients in port logistics, cargo, textile, paper, and gold trading industries across India and Dubai. Merciglobal's ERP solutions are built for operational complexity, combining deep domain expertise with lean, integrated software architecture.
Corporate Office
401, Trinity Cygnus, Udhna Magdalla Road,
Surat 395007, Gujarat, India
Get in Touch
+91 76220-14301
info@merciglobal.com
www.merciglobal.com
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