Together with the IT experts from PTA IT-Beratung in Mannheim, beegy GmbH recently introduced the ERP system Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to further optimize its merchandise management and warehouse management processes. The merchandise management system was connected to the CRM environment on the existing Microsoft Dynamic 365 platform. The consistent data models allow easy interaction. By maintaining transparent warehouse processes for its customers and partners, the pioneer in decentralized energy management achieves a high level of on-time delivery, first-class service and therefore satisfied customers.
beegy turns white-label energy into an experience. beegy GmbH – the brand name is derived from better energy – offers complete solutions in the field of decentralized energy management. The product range includes photovoltaic systems, battery storage, charging stations, heat pumps and electric storage heaters, supplemented by innovative services such as an electricity flat rate, 20-year guarantee, web portal and remote monitoring. As a white-label offering, energy suppliers and other companies can offer these products to their customers with their own look and feel.
beegy supports its partners along the entire process chain: from components and energy supply to sales, after-sales and billing services. beegy is a wholly owned subsidiary of MVV Energie AG. In the course of setting up a new warehouse with its specialist partner Zschau GmbH, a nationwide technical service provider, beegy decided to introduce an integrated merchandise management system in order to make all warehouse processes, including orders, deliveries and contracts, transparent.
With these requirements in mind, beegy and the PTA’s IT consultants set out to find a suitable IT solution – and quickly found what they were looking for. The ERP system Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central was chosen. The solution is characterized above all by the fact that it is simple and user-friendly, thus fulfilling another important requirement that was close to the project team’s heart: all processes in merchandise management should be mapped in the standard and customizing of the solution should be avoided. Another point that underpinned this decision is the fact that beegy has years of experience with the Microsoft platform and has been using it for years. PTA’s IT consultants have also been well known and trusted by the specialists for decentralized energy management for years. Between October 2019 and February 2020, beegy and PTA jointly migrated the CRM environment from Microsoft Dynamics 2016 On-Premise to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online. DATIS, the sister company of the Mannheim-based IT service provider, has also hosted the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 on-premise solution for beegy since it went live five years ago – in a highly available and fail-safe manner. And PTA has been looking after the entire application lifecycle management for years.
The goals were set and so the project team set to work. However, before the ERP solution was introduced, the first step in the project was a detailed process analysis. After all, the aim was to use the new solution to perfectly map all flows of goods and inventories, to keep an eye on the entire supply chain and also to improve customer service. “The process analysis that we carried out before the actual ERP implementation paid off in full, even though it was time-consuming,” explains Martin Seber, IT Manager at beegy.
“As we had been handling the processes in our merchandise management manually and with Excel lists, it was important that we defined and optimized process flows together. This gave us a solid basis for a holistic overview of our new warehouse and paved the way for us to have control over all goods transactions and movements at all times and to deliver all orders on time.”
Once all processes had undergone a detailed analysis and their workflows were now clearly defined, it was time to introduce the ERP solution Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. This went hand in hand with the integration of the new ERP solution with beegy’s existing CRM landscape. The cloud ERP solution thus enables access to the CRM system and vice versa. With this integration, beegy will be able to use and synchronize data from the other application in the future. For example, beegy sales employees can view the availability of a stored item in Dynamics 365 Sales when creating a quotation or sales order.
“With the integrated solution, we achieve a high degree of flexibility, manage to respond more quickly to customer inquiries, deliver faster and thus further increase our customer satisfaction,” says Dr. Rainer Arlt, Head of IT at beegy, who is satisfied with the introduction of the new ERP landscape. Especially as the goals of mapping all merchandise management processes in the standard were also achieved. Based on the previous process analysis, beegy aligned its business processes with the workflows of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. This completely eliminates the need for time-consuming customizing. “As we stayed completely within the standard, we benefit from a lean, simple and user-friendly solution that we all found our way around after a short training period,” summarizes Martin Seber.
David Krämer from specialist partner Zschau was responsible for the scanner landscape used for barcode-based warehouse management and its seamless integration into the Microsoft Cloud platform: “The system integration went smoothly and with mobile data capture using online and offline-capable clients in the warehouse area, beegy and Zschau have introduced easy-to-use processes that make work in the warehouse even more productive.”
The new cloud ERP solution is flanked by the power features of the Microsoft cloud, more specifically Power Automate. The feature not only provides the interface for integrating Dynamics CRM, it also enables beegy employees to automate repetitive tasks and digital processes in so-called flows, allowing them to concentrate on the most important core tasks. An additional benefit of Power Automate: With the help of hundreds of predefined templates, business users will in future be able to build small apps themselves and automate processes in the respective flow. And even if none of the templates match the required process, you can easily create your own workflows. Microsoft Power Automate is designed so that non-technical employees can automate them without the help of a developer. And if there is ever an emergency, the PTA’s IT consultants will be happy to provide advice and assistance. With the use of Power Automate and the automated flows it achieves, beegy optimizes all processes in warehouse management. Data loss due to manual media disruptions is a thing of the past and the automation of numerous flows significantly reduces the error rate.
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The implementation of a newly developed MS Dynamics contribution margin accounting app represents a further step in the digital transformation at beegy. This supports users in various areas such as order overview, sales management, KPIs and stock tracking. To this end, reports are created in Power BI and made available via the Power BI service. This combines various data mainly from Dynamics CRM with information from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The highlight here: as beegy does not use a data warehouse or data lake, the report data is taken directly from the source systems. To do this, the app reads the required data from the various systems and links them via the order. The data for employee planning comes from the CRM system, the employee’s booked working hours from the TimR time recording system and the materials and flat rates for material and labor costs processed at the installation site from the ERP environment Business Central. Invoiced lump sums for materials and wages are then compared with the actual materials booked and times worked at the installation site. The app provides a separate overview with various tabs and sections for each order, which display the raw data and aggregate it into sections according to defined logics.
In future, all data can be pulled into PowerBI in this way via dataflows and prepared visually for management. With the new app for contribution margin accounting, beegy is taking a big step towards managing the company based on reliable key figures. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Business Central, beegy completely automates and standardizes the processes from the incoming lead to the order.
“This is of central importance to us, as the installation of an energy system on site determines how much contribution margin we actually generate with an order,” explains Lukas Möhner, Manager IT & Technology at beegy. “With the new app, we can clearly aggregate all sales-relevant data for an order and the intelligent breakdown of real wage costs enables us to precisely determine the contribution margin. This brings light into the darkness, allowing us to identify and realize potential for improvement in a targeted manner. By persisting the orders, we have created a ‘Data Warehouse Light’, which visualizes the results using PowerBI and makes them available to our operational units for management purposes.”
The introduction of the cloud ERP system Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is another milestone in beegy’s digitalization strategy. By using Power Apps, the provider of complete solutions in the field of decentralized energy management is also flexibly positioned and can react agilely to market requirements in the energy sector. The integrated solution, transparent warehouse management and automated processes allow for better planning, quick feedback to customers and high delivery reliability. This is particularly important in times of the climate debate and its impact on the energy sector, coupled with a highly competitive energy market. And so it should come as no surprise that the two project partners are already focusing on the next digitization projects.
“With the integrated solution, we achieve a high degree of flexibility, manage to respond more quickly to customer inquiries, deliver faster and thus further increase our customer satisfaction.”
Dr. Rainer Arlt, Head of IT at beegy, is satisfied with the introduction of the new ERP landscape.
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