Warsco supports its growth with SAP Business ByDesign

Challenge

Warsco supplies units for offices and provides temporary custom-built housing in sectors such as construction, education and healthcare. ‘We had been looking for a comprehensive software program capable of supporting all our activities, including sales, rental, transport, production and aftercare,’ says CEO Marc Warson. ‘We considered about a dozen options, but we couldn’t find the tool that could do everything.’

Solution

‘There is a risk in being first, but there was also a huge drive at TheValueChain to use the new technology,’ Marc Warson says. ‘We thought that SAP was out of our budget, but TheValueChain suggested SAP Business ByDesign. This had never been implemented in Belgium before but it is based on forty years of business processes and user experience. TheValueChain told us to compare it to a virtual wardrobe. You take out of it exactly what you need: a T-shirt when it’s sunny and a sweater when it gets cold. Business ByDesign is comprehensive and in the cloud. You only use what you need. You don’t even need your own server anymore and thanks to regular software updates, you automatically receive all improvements and adjustments, including changes in fiscal legislation, for example. All of this convinced me.’

There was no demand or need for the development of custom solutions. ‘We configured the software to Warsco’s needs,’ says Steve Brusatto. ‘If there wasn’t a standard component available, such as for rental or transport, we used the building blocks of the package to design efficient and solid processes for this too.’

‘For the implementation, we purposefully chose to keep things simple in terms of the number of people involved: one specialist at our site and one at TheValueChain,’ says Marc Warson. ‘With a bigger team, you can progress more quickly but there is also the risk that you start working alongside each other. There was good contact between both parties and whenever there was a problem, TheValueChain immediately responded.’

Result 

The change was smooth. ‘It took just one year,’ says Warson. ‘Our people looked forward to the new system, they were extra motivated. The implementation of the master data was a colossal job. And there are always things you think of afterwards: it would have been better if we had done this differently. But we are talking details here. When you look at the bigger picture, everything went without a glitch.’

The objective was to capture all processes related to the sale or rental of a unit in one software program – from order to delivery. ‘The product Warsco provides, custom-built units, is complex,’ says Steve Brusatto who managed the project for TheValueChain. ‘The customer has numerous options, similar to buying a car. Warsco creates a custom design and based on the components of the unit, the software draws up a quote. This is easy for the sales people and accounting, with a clear overview of margins for management.’

‘We felt that things looked good and the demo convinced us. We also want to start using the software in other departments soon, for example in production. But first, everything has to run like clockwork. The system can grow with our company, which is exactly what we wanted.’