ERP upgrade at a roof tile manufacturer.

Partner search

“The relationship with our previous partner company was strained, so we started looking for a new partner company. We made contact with several companies and finally came across anaptis on the recommendation of a neighboring company.

anaptis was the first company with which we held a personal meeting to get to know each other and discuss our expectations and ideas. Already here the impression was coherent and we felt very comfortable. We particularly liked the approach. Instead of a four-week workshop including a detailed concept, anaptis conducts a workshop over a few days and works in an agile manner. This fit very well with our ideas, so we ended our partner search after this meeting.”

Implementation

“Since our previous solution, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, was getting on in years and we were dealing with some issues in the system (e.g. booking) as well as server performance issues, there was little staff resistance when we discussed the issue with the team. Instead, it was more the anticipation of a new user-friendly solution that had spread. This, of course, made it easier for us to proceed. We also involved our team throughout the implementation and held internal workshops.

The only concern was related to the renewal of the item master. To do this, you have to know that we have about 14,000 articles and our orders usually consist of 10 to 12 articles. Most of the employees knew the item numbers almost by heart and only needed a few minutes to enter the orders. Thus, the concern was that processes would take longer as a result of the change. In response, we assured the team that we would adapt the new scheme to the old one. In this way, we were able to mitigate this concern.

Unfortunately, there were some delays on our part during the project. Of course, our project manager’s calendar at anaptis was tightly scheduled, so he was already needed again on new projects. However, this did not harm our project success in any way. We were always able to clarify all matters through short official channels with our project manager or the developers themselves, which we greatly appreciated.

Overall, we are very satisfied with our collaboration with anaptis. We consistently communicate at eye level and can exchange ideas very well.”

Result

“Today, we are very satisfied working with Dynamics 365 Business Central including our desired customizations (forwarding order processing, picking, engine database) and have to do significantly less work in order to successfully complete our work. One of the advantages of Dynamics 365 Business Central for us is the user-friendly web interface, which means that our field staff have all the data at their fingertips, even when they are on site with the customer, and no longer have to prepare anything in advance. At the same time, we have equipped our field service team with tablets.

Our very individual processes in the production area were completely developed in-house with an individual programming logic. Our daily business is also mapped appropriately here. In our billing department, we were able to increase our level of automation by rebuilding the process together. Ongoing price increases are now displayed in a separate module and our pricing runs completely IT-supported and securely via Dynamics 365 Business Central.

With regard to our complex deposit system, anaptis suggested that we set up load carrier accounts. This gave us an ideal solution for the deposit system of load carriers. Finally, we were able to automate the process with this module. Now, different types of pallets and boxes are kept in their own pallet accounts with different issue and return prices (taking into account the wear and tear fee). We can easily keep track of how many pallets a customer has received and display a quantity-based balance per customer/customer group in the sales orders on a load carrier and price group basis at any time (statistics as a factbox in the sales orders). In addition, correction or post-maintenance is possible via a book sheet.

In addition to Dynamics 365 Business Central, we work with a few other tools: We parted with our previous EDI solution and implemented Anveo EDI Connect. The app is very flexible and allows us to program and customize little things ourselves. For example, we can now create mappings for partners ourselves and customize them according to guidelines. We have also introduced the Tempras TempVision time recording solution in conjunction with standardized time recording terminals at all locations. In this way, our time recording is transferred to Dynamics 365 Business Central and it is even possible to continue working automatically with the data in payroll accounting. With regard to the phasing out of the maintenance of the payroll solution, we have switched to the Haveldata NAPA3 app and can rely on legally compliant payroll. We also use Comsol Multiship for shipping processing (transport, label creation, shipping planning, package pickup) and OPplus for managing open items in financial accounting.

We have optimized our reporting with the help of Power BI and can now quickly draw evaluations without having to program them elaborately or export them to Excel.”