TWG & Triangle: Implementación BC Case Study
Thomas Wellness Group is a company closely linked to the fitness and wellness sector with the aim of providing comprehensive services in all types of projects, both for professionals and individuals. Its vision? To be the first choice for anyone thinking of designing and equipping a Wellness space.
In 2016 the company moved its headquarters to San Sebastián de los Reyes to unify in the same complex the offices of all its companies, warehouse (over 1,700m2) and showroom.
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PREVIOUS SITUATION
When Thomas Wellness Group (hereinafter TWG) contacted Triangle, it was coming from 2 failed ERP implementations in a short period of time. “The last tool we had worked with, for example, did not allow users to move forward in their day-to-day work because it was very slow and not very end-user oriented. So, the sales people could not achieve the desired productivity because of the platform used. This was one of the main reasons that pushed us to carry out the ERP change project,” explains Janeth Huerta, from the Customer Experience team.
In order to study which ERP on the market could be a good fit for the company, TWG conceptualized the new digital ecosystem it wanted to achieve. They wanted to leave behind mainly manual reporting, impossibility of mobile use, slow customer service, long and error-ridden manual processes, poor traceability, unfriendly navigation, lack of Office 365, difficulty in extracting information and little customization at the user level.
“TWG carried out extensive work prior to the decision of which ERP to implement, since it drew the digital transformation scenario of the entire company. In addition, it was also defined through user stories how the ERP would interact with the different platforms that TWG already had”, says Carme Cortada, Operations Director at Triangle, who also led this Dynamics 365 Business Central implementation project.
DECISION MAKING
Based on the requirements document prepared by TWG and the digital ecosystem it wanted to create, demonstrations and joint sessions were held to ensure that the output of the project with Business Central would be as expected. In this way, it was verified that Dynamics 365 Business Central offered the expected functionalities, both in terms of customization, specific functionalities, ability to connect with other tools and integration with Office 365.
“A document was prepared with the comparison between the two tools we were evaluating: Business Central and SAP Business One and the two partners that represented them,” comments Laura Martínez, a member of the Customer Experience team. She adds: “It was a very extensive presentation, elaborated from the user point of view of all the company’s departments (for example, indicating what should be controlled, what actions should be carried out, what automations could benefit them…)”.
Finally, Microsoft was chosen with the Triangle alliance because it was the proposal that fulfilled most of the requirements, minimizing development costs. Laura Martínez - TWG Customer Experience
After this study, the company decided to go for Dynamics 365 Business Central in its cloud version as the company’s ERP of the future, with the objective of maximizing the use of the Office 365 platform.
GO-LIVE
TWG’s Customer Experience team was in charge of leading the Business Central implementation project, as they are usually involved in the company’s main strategic and operational projects, and it was also considered that the ERP implementation project was closely related to the customer service and experience offered to the client.
Laura, a key player in the project, explains that “the partner was key at a conceptual level because it helped us to understand the main processes and operations of the business. In this sense, Triangle did not limit itself to just implementing a rigid tool, but first sought to understand the casuistry and what the company was looking for and proposed alternative solutions to our way of working”.
Another added value that Triangle has given us? "Patience." Laura Martínez - TWG Customer Success
How was the process of implementing the solution? The project was carried out following Scrum methodology. “A backlog was established with all the functionality that had to be considered for the go-live. This functionality was divided into different sprints with different deliverables,” explains Carme Cortada. The objective? To enable TWG users to start working with the tool as soon as possible and become familiar with the environment.
The assessment of this methodology by the project involved is positive because “from the beginning we started with product training and we could see how it worked and, in addition, periodically we had small deliverables to test the tool, without waiting for the end of the project, which might have been traditional”, explains Janeth.
In her own words, Laura emphasizes that “it was key that from the very first moment we were in contact with the tool, so that we learned by loading data, validating processes, etc. at the same time that we were getting to know the solution”.
Thanks to the team’s hard work, the go-live was fluent in the use of the tool and had solid knowledge in terms of navigation and agility to complete processes.
THE BREAKTHROUGH
Today, Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS works as a management tool in the 4 companies of the group.
“From the beginning, the fact that the tool was user friendly helped us a lot to increase the productivity of the team that uses it, and the similarity of the interface with other Microsoft products also contributed to this factor”, explains Janeth.
Special mention should be made of the change of business structure that the company undertook during the first months of Covid-19. During the pandemic period, they experienced an explosion of orders for fitness equipment in B2C (from 20 orders a day to 400!)…
Having Business Central was crucial, since the tool provided us with the functionality to execute processes on a massive scale and adapt to the new work rhythm. Janeth Huerta - TWG Customer Experience
Laura adds that, in the planning meetings, Carme helped them to analyze how they could transfer the situation that the business was experiencing to the ERP. “The relationship with Triangle was crucial as it helped us change priorities and always offered maximum flexibility to change the direction of the project. With a more rigid partner, it would have been useless if we had been quick,” he points out.
Along the same lines, Carme says: “In a situation of uncertainty, if the tool had not been well stabilized, it would have been easy to choose to work with the old tool (which is the one with which users had more confidence)”.
