myPartner helps Internacional Tabacos optimize its ordering process with Power Apps

Optimizing business processes to better respond to market challenges

Starting as a family business in Portugal 35 years ago and expanding ever since, Internacional Tabacos owns and operates about 2,600 tobacco vending machines and provides tobacco supply services nationally and internationally. The brand is part of FEPI Grupo, which also operates the brands Internacional Vinhos, Vitavending, Presse Linha e S.A, and Encostas das Perdizes. 

Internacional Tabacos continuously strives to streamline and improve its business processes to make them more effective and to better respond to market challenges. The company implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central in 2018 with help from myPartner, a Microsoft gold-certified partner providing enterprise management solutions using Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform. With offices in Leça da Palmeira and Lisbon, myPartner has helped modernize and optimize businesses in Portugal and abroad since 2004.

Customized sales app significantly increases order processing speed

Seeking to further streamline its sales processes, Internacional Tabacos again reached out to myPartner for a solution. In response, myPartner built a customized sales app using Power Apps and Power Automate and integrated it with Dynamics 365, enabling the app to follow Internacional Tabacos’ defined back-office processes. Featuring easy-to-follow screens, the sales app delivers real-time customer data and history to Internacional Tabacos’ sales team and speeds up its order collection process.  

“The chosen solution was based on the available solutions that are part of the Microsoft stack, specifically the Power Platform,” said Carmen Cruz, project manager at myPartner. “Here we chose Power Apps to design the process and screens that users would use to manage sales and collections, and we chose Power Automate to manage processes and automate the integration with Dynamics 365.” 

With the new app in the hands of its sellers, Internacional Tabacos has significantly increased the speed of processing orders. The app accomplishes this by reducing the execution time of the order between the moment it is collected from the customer and the moment it arrives at the storage system to be processed, as there is no need for additional intervention to integrate the order in the ERP system. This frees up time for back-office employees who used to transfer orders between the two systems. Now they can dedicate more time to activities with greater added value, namely sales.

The sales app also gives sellers access to customer interaction history, sales conditions, and the Internacional Tabacos product catalog, making it easier to personalize sales and generate sales on new items.

“We chose Power Apps to streamline the act of selling when sellers are on the street collecting orders,” said Henrique Almeida, South Delegation Director, Internacional Tabacos. “With Power Apps, the sales app makes this process more agile.”