Swapping carbon paper for tablets: Shredding expert WEIMA restructures its global processes with Dynamics 365

The challenge: A growing company with dated processes

In Germany, 100 million disposable paper towels are used every day, while more than 220 kilos of packaging waste is produced per person each year. Not to mention the 600,000 tons of electrical waste that piles up annually—less than half of which is recycled. The planet is losing more and more space to the accumulation of waste. “We at WEIMA believe we have a responsibility to do our bit for a more sustainable world,” says Andreas Schatton, Head of IT at WEIMA Maschinenbau GmbH. WEIMA’s shredders, briquette presses, and dewatering presses stand at the start of many material cycles and ensure waste is recycled sustainably. The company’s “Destroy Responsibly” program also helps increase the sustainability of events such as trade fairs and public exhibitions: a staffed and fully functioning production line of shredders and conveyor belts can be used to recycle the waste wood from a trade show, for example, in the same place it was created: at the exhibition grounds.

WEIMA has developed a way of tackling a global problem. The company is growing and breaking into new markets: a good time to restructure its internal operational processes and make them more efficient. A quick look at how the company used to handle service requests shows why some of WEIMA’s IT solutions could no longer keep up with the company’s steady growth: the customer service team would deal with requests either over the phone or by email—requests that often concerned wear parts such as a new rotor blade for a machine or support to commission a new system. The technicians’ time was scheduled solely via Outlook calendars. When on-site, the technicians had to deal with assembly orders separately: they filled out each form by hand using conventional carbon copy pads and had the customers sign them. Orders were then put on the back burner while the copy slips made their way to the sales office. This decentralized data management led to confusion and rather vague resource planning. 

It also took a lot of time and effort to schedule on-site service appointments: there was a general disconnect between the service department and the field technicians. Technicians who were on-site servicing their customers’ machines had no flexibility when it came to updating the status of their order. And they couldn’t retrieve any information about their customers or services digitally. “It was becoming increasingly apparent that we needed a new solution that would prevent downtime in our customers’ waste disposal chains and enable us to remain competitive into the future,” Schatton says.

The solution: Dynamics 365 for more transparency and efficiency throughout the company

Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 has taken WEIMA’s operational processes to a whole new level: the Dynamics 365 Customer Service module has made processes transparent for the first time. “Today, we all work in a uniform, centralized system,” Schatton says. A digital ticket is issued as soon as a service request comes in. Every member of the team can see which projects are yet to begin, which are underway, and which have been completed. Thanks to the new IT solution, employees in the service department have a clear overview of which colleagues have time to take on new orders. Carbon paper has been swapped for tablets, which means technicians can access up-to-date project statuses as and when required.  

Field staff also benefit from the improvements made to the internal systems. For instance, technicians now have a digital link to the offices thanks to Dynamics 365 Field Service. If a service request comes in, service technicians no longer have to wait for a separate notification to come from the service department. Instead, they receive a digital service order via the Field Service solution detailing everything they need to know about the customer and the machines. Logs, also with photos, can be updated on-site and saved with Power Automate. The subsequent test reports can now also be completed and signed by the customer digitally. At the click of a button, all this information finds its way back to WEIMA ready for invoicing.  

WEIMA has already worked with Microsoft solutions in the past, so the decision to introduce Dynamics 365 came naturally. “We know Microsoft has an excellent reputation,” Schatton says. “And our employees are already familiar with the uniform system environment. We knew pretty quickly that we wanted to use Dynamics 365 as our new CRM system. It fits nicely in our existing system landscape with Microsoft 365.”

WEIMA called on MODUS Consult GmbH, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to implement the project. “MODUS Consult has known WEIMA and our processes for many years. We can count on a strong collaboration with them,” Schatton says. With their expertise in the area of Dynamics 365 and change management, MODUS Consult did a great job of helping WEIMA’s employees find their way around the new system. And thanks to the agile approach to project management, employees were using some functions pretty much from the get-go. “Employees’ initial concerns quickly disappeared as the benefits emerged,” says Fabian Schaar, Sales Manager at MODUS Consult. “The longer they used the applications, the more enthusiastic they became.”

Other IT projects are already in the pipeline: while WEIMA’s German colleagues were busy introducing the Customer Service and Field Service modules, their US counterparts were focused on Dynamics 365 Sales. “The aim is to share our collective experiences between the offices so we can gradually and efficiently expand our application portfolio,” Schatton says. WEIMA is also in the process of introducing a digital machine folder on SharePoint that service technicians can use to manage their various work orders—with the support of MODUS Consult. The plan is to expand the solution to other global service and sales locations in the future. WEIMA is also looking at linking an e-commerce system to Dynamics 365. “We’ve used this opportunity to not only digitize processes, but also scrutinize and optimize them,” Schatton concludes. This paves the way for WEIMA to continue reducing big things into smaller things in the future, and thus play an important role in protecting the environment.