From customer contact to accounting: Dynamics 365 Business Central helps RECARO Gaming manage data with ease

The challenge: Complex supply chains push manual data maintenance to breaking point

RECARO Gaming relies on intelligent interaction with strong partners across the entire value chain of its chairs—from operating distribution channels to manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping to processing of returns. “Our overall product life cycle encompasses multiple channels, multiple warehouses, and a variety of sales channels running on different systems,” says Jana Pokorna, Head of Finance at RECARO Gaming. This results in a supply chain with numerous intermediate steps involving lots of players. “That’s why we had to manually merge the data for an overall picture and for control purposes in the past,” she continues. Doing so consumed a vast amount of time and money. “What’s more, this kind of approach is confusing, prone to error, and ultimately redundant,” Pokorna says. “Nevertheless, at peak times, between 800 and 900 orders a month were already processed in this way.” However, as the business continued to expand, manual data maintenance soon reached its limits. As the company added more and more international markets, it had to integrate additional languages, systems, and interfaces—which made things extremely complicated. Benjamin Dürr, IT Manager at RECARO Gaming, says: “We needed a central system for the entire supply chain, with uniform standards and automated processes. For everything to run smoothly, data relating to all the players involved has to be available at all times at a central point with flexible, standardized access.”

So RECARO Gaming joined forces with TSO-DATA, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to find a new solution. “Among the major benefits of Microsoft’s cloud platform are the connection to other cloud services, central user management, scalability, and being able to use the system from anywhere,” Dürr says. “The main reason we chose Dynamics 365 Business Central was that we were looking for the simplest way of integrating our processes into the system. Microsoft’s sheer scope of presence is also a plus when it comes to connecting to international marketplaces and having a system that will endure.”

The solution: All data available at a glance thanks to Dynamics 365 Business Central

The decision to introduce Dynamics 365 Business Central in connection with TSO-DATA’s WebConnector solution for Business Central provided RECARO Gaming with a host of new opportunities, including being able to connect to its online shop. This means that customer orders are fed directly in to the Dynamics solution. “As soon as an order is placed, all data relating to that order is stored centrally in the ERP system, which means that all employees and partners can access it,” says Thomas Harmann, ERP Consultant at TSO-DATA. And that’s not the only thing the cloud enables: it’s now possible to access the data from anywhere, at any time, using any device. Dürr says: “That also makes our day-to-day work more efficient because we always have access to the latest data. No longer having to transfer data manually saves us time and money. The ordering process is becoming much simpler and faster, and our customers are noticing this as well.” Dynamics 365 Business Central also lets customers and employees access order status information whenever they wish. Because customers receive a tracking number, they can view the status and location of their order at any time.

Logistics and finance processes have also been improved and simplified to avert manual errors. Now, the forwarding of orders to the various service providers and warehouses is automated, as are related notifications back to RECARO Gaming. “In the past, an employee would have to manually transfer this data. Today, the only thing we do manually is check any anomalies,” Pokorna says.

Yet another benefit is the evaluation of the now centralized data. This leads to more transparency, both within the company and in its collaboration with partners. By evaluating the data, RECARO Gaming can now also automatically compare markets at a national and international level. This used to be a much more arduous undertaking as tax systems vary from country to country. “In less than two years of using Dynamics 365 Business Central, we’ve established state-of-the-art internal warehouse management, tied in international warehouses and logistics providers, and fully integrated our order and returns processing on the platform,” Dürr says. “This provides an important foundation for the future.”

Dynamics 365 Business Central—a simple way to add new markets

Using Dynamics 365 Business Central, RECARO Gaming will have no problems implementing any future expansion into new markets. The solution’s basic structure can be transferred quickly and easily— it just needs to be tailored to country-specific requirements. In addition, the systems can be scaled for any number of employees with no need for extensive training. Dürr also sees further potential in e-commerce: “Marketplaces vary from country to country. This means that successfully expanding into new countries hinges on offering and integrating other marketplaces alongside the large and established ones. That’s precisely why our ERP will continue to grow in the future.”