Drive for digitization powered by Dynamics 365 Business Central keeps CURRAX fully focused on its winning ways

CURRAX provides powertrain solutions for global clients. Powertrains help complex machinery run—items such as turbines, conveyor belts, pumps, and other industrial applications. CURRAX clients source components such as electric motors, geared motors, frequency converters, geared units, and couplings, all the way to complete powertrain solutions. These solutions can be complex and have potentially months-long lead times, and/or can be very expensive and need to be acquired rapidly.

CURRAX has built its reputation and its business on being synonymous with precision, competence, and curiosity by uniquely providing engineering services so products are perfectly tailored to clients’ needs and specifications. All of this occurs digitally.  

Jan Schmidt, Chief Digital Officer at CURRAX, sums up the process, “It is quite simple. You decide what you need, push a button, get a quote, decide if you want it, and then we deliver to you anywhere in the world.” Making things appear simple requires hard work. CURRAX wants to digitize and simplify all processes to keep focus on its core competencies.  

The company is a “family” of more than 20 dedicated professionals—primarily engineers, industrial merchants, and foreign trade specialists—pushing themselves beyond conventional titles to do what it takes to meet their clients’ needs. CURRAX pursued the strategy that has worked for its core business—digitization—to help minimize all distractions, including “running the business day to day.” The company looked to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to power it forward. 

A swift move to the cloud provides immediate agility

COSMO CONSULT is one of the largest Dynamics partners, with 1,200 global employees providing end-to-end portfolio solutions from ERP to CRM and the modern workplace. The company has been a trusted partner of CURRAX since 2014. COSMO CONSULT understood that digitization is core to CURRAX’s competitive advantage in the marketplace.  

“CURRAX expects technology and apps to make their work easier so they can focus on the main job. They do not want to have many administrative tasks which do not have to do anything with their main objectives,” confirmed Ines Fischer, Customer Service Consultant at COSMO CONSULT. COSMO CONSULT helped CURRAX move to the cloud with speed and confidence. CURRAX had used Microsoft Dynamics NAV, moved to Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises, then to an Azure-hosted environment, and fully onto Dynamics 365 Business Central online in 2020.  

CURRAX wants agility and scale. Purpose-built, modular OOB (out of the box) functionality allows it to pivot and adapt. Conversion to the cloud only took a couple of days, with no downtime. COSMO CONSULT only had to customize a series of reports and tables". CURRAX always wants to have the newest version. They try to be nearest the standard to easily take advantage of the latest updates,” said Ines Fischer. The company wanted to stay on the most relevant digital solution to run the core operations of its business.

This strategy has worked to CURRAX’s advantage, providing significant operational flexibility. 

• Dynamics 365 Business Central enables CURRAX’s full sales process, inventory management, accounting, and management of master file data for customers and suppliers. When CURRAX wanted to expand its supply chain and outsource warehousing of large multiple-ton powertrains, they were able to “flip a switch” and begin immediate use of production functionality in Dynamics 365 as well. 
• The switch to Dynamics 365 Business Central online increased efficiency throughout the sales department. This allowed a year-over-year growth of 12% in project handling. 
• Adding new colleagues to the system used to be an intensive process; now it only involves the easy requisition of an additional license and can be completed in less than an hour.

“We did not have an IT administrator. We had a small group around the managing director, which basically dealt with all these topics. And being a smaller company, a lot of this was done by the managing director himself. So now he can focus on the real important things,” shared Jan Schmidt.

He goes on to share, “On one hand, it was very comforting to have security, licensing, and compliance managed for us. On the other hand, we saved a lot of money.” The costs of the changeover were amortized within a half-year. 

A solution that keeps pace with CURRAX’s aspirations

CURRAX has always leveraged digitization to stay at the forefront of employee mobility and client service. It had no disruptions during the pandemic. Enabling its workforce and exceeding client needs are the highest priority outcomes of CURRAX’s digitization journey. 

Performing better

“With Dynamics 365 Business Central, we gain agility in a fast-moving world. Agility is the key to winning projects,” shares Jan Schmidt. CURRAX’s business is global; clients in new markets come up regularly. If a new client in Japan or India emerges, the lines of communication, basic functionality, and needed resources are at the ready. The company wants to reduce any friction involved in client interactions. 

“You have to take care of people. Make it easier for them to do their work regardless of their role or situation,” expands Jan Schmidt. CURRAX has leveraged opportunities for colleagues to achieve lighter workloads or be supported through personal or work circumstances. SaaS (software as a service) has freed capacity for this important work—work that leads to allowing colleagues to get the support they need to support their clients and focus on their core responsibilities. “The Microsoft 365 environment enables our subject matter experts to be able to focus on the core elements of their business,” confirms Daniel Aßmann. 

Working smarter

CURRAX colleagues are familiar with the Microsoft ecosystem and leverage Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 Business Central collectively to collaborate. “For holidays and vacations, colleagues can click and share so other colleagues can support them, even if they have not been previously involved,” shares Jan Schmidt. This is a significant advantage, considering the complexity of CURRAX’s work. 

Conversely, when the managing director is on the go, he can manage the business. “The streamlining of all our processes allows our company leader to manage the whole organization from his tablet or smartphone,” explains Jan Schmidt. 

Adapting faster

CURRAX had no operational issues due to the global pandemic; it quickly adapted to the changing market environment. One manager was able to successfully work from the remote shores of Cameroon for several weeks. Working remotely was imperceptible to colleagues and clients, with the only issue being when her teenage son streamed content with his cousin into the wee hours of the night and consumed all her data bandwidth.  

Extending capabilities that enable end-to-end visibility  

CURRAX can do its business anywhere. Now it wants to connect its ecosystem further and implement Dynamics 365 Customer Service to enable significant collaboration with key partners and customers. A seamless integration with its ERP, Dynamics 365 Business Central, and its chosen CRM solution, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, will lead to greater visibility and further insights. Currax is working on its own web shop and additional marketplace capabilities. 

Turning ideas into action with Microsoft Power Platform, specifically Power Automate, is also on CURRAX’s agenda. Jan Schmidt sees many opportunities in automating approval processes and finding new ways to increase the quality of customer interactions. 

True to CURRAX’s core competencies, it wants to always be on the forefront of being future-ready. Growing the use of IoT with sensors across the supply chain to facilitate machine performance in a scalable manner is on the horizon. 

The possibilities are seemingly endless, and sky’s the limit for CURRAX’s growth. “We are using a tiny slice of what is possible,” concludes Jan Schmidt. “With every partnership, with every connector, we gain access to a whole new universe, but still within the stable Microsoft environment at core. It's been working for CURRAX since the company started, and it will work for us in the future.”