NordicWear is a Scandinavian retail chain with over 50 physical stores and a growing webshop. They ran Business Central on-premises and moved to Business Central online. Here is how the project was approached, what was built and what it delivered.
Background and challenges
NordicWear had run Business Central on-premises for over ten years. It worked when the chain was smaller. With 50+ stores in Scandinavia, the server and the installation had become a bottleneck.
Key challenges
- The system became slow during peak periods
- No real-time view of stock across stores
- Hard to integrate with the new e-commerce platform
- Rising costs and effort to run the installation
- Monthly group consolidation was manual and took a long time
- Store managers and executives had no access from their phones
Project goals
- Move Business Central to the cloud without disrupting store operations
- A faster system, especially during peak periods
- Real-time stock status across stores and the webshop
- Integration with the e-commerce platform
- Lower total costs for the ERP system
- Mobile access for store managers and management
The migration strategy
The project was split into four phases, so the stores could keep selling along the way and so that data was validated before anything went live.
Phase 1: Assessment and planning (4 weeks)
- Review of the existing installation
- Documentation of all customisations and integrations
- Clarifying which data had to come along and where there were problems
- Timeline for the migration
- Risk plan with a plan B for each critical part
Phase 2: Environment setup and testing (3 weeks)
- Setting up the cloud environment
- Customisations rewritten as extensions that can run in Business Central online
- Trial migrations with samples of data
- Setting up and testing the integration with the e-commerce platform
- Load tests that simulated peak load
Phase 3: Data migration and cutover (2 weeks)
- Final data extract from the on-premises installation
- Migration of master data, postings and history
- Validation and reconciliation of the migrated data
- Cutover store by store in periods of low traffic
- On-site support in the most important stores during the cutover
Phase 4: Optimisation and training (3 weeks)
- Tuning performance based on actual usage
- Training of all user groups
- Starting to use new features in the cloud version
- Monitoring and support procedures in place
- Documentation of the solution for ongoing operation
Key implementation features
Four parts of the solution were built directly for NordicWear's challenges:
Real-time inventory management
Stock status is now visible in real time across all 50+ stores and the webshop. If a store does not have the item, the store manager can see where it is and pass the order on from there.
E-commerce integration
Business Central is integrated with NordicWear's Shopify Plus webshop. Stock, orders, customer data and product data are synchronised in real time, so the stores and the webshop work from the same figures.
Mobile access for store managers
Store managers and management use the Business Central app to approve purchases, look up stock, follow sales and handle customer cases without sitting at a PC.
Automated financial consolidation
The monthly group consolidation used to take almost two weeks. It is now automated and takes two days, so the finance department spends its time on analysis rather than manual work.
Results and benefits
The results after the migration:
Performance improvements
- 60% faster response times, also during peak periods
- 75% fewer downtime incidents
- Can handle 3x as many transactions without slowing down
Operational improvements
- 45% fewer stock-outs thanks to real-time stock visibility
- 22% higher sales conversion, because orders can be fulfilled from another store
- Approvals take minutes instead of days
- Month-end close down from two weeks to two days
Cost savings
- 35% lower total IT infrastructure costs over three years
- No hardware replacement every couple of years
- 2 full-time IT employees moved to other tasks
- A fixed monthly subscription makes the budget more precise
Lessons learned
What we take away from the project:
- Involve the store managers from the start. They know what has to work on a busy Saturday. It shaped the solution more than any requirements specification.
- Go live in phases. Store by store made it possible to fix errors before they hit the whole chain.
- Training is as important as the technology. Thorough training of all user groups is what got the system into use quickly.
- Clean up the data first. Cleaning up before the migration saved many problems during and after.
- Go-live is not the end. The system was tuned for weeks after go-live, and that is where much of the gain came from.
Conclusion
NordicWear went from an on-premises installation that held back growth to Business Central online with stock visibility across channels, mobile access and a month-end close in two days.
What got the project over the line was not the technology alone: a phased plan, data that was cleaned up before the migration, and as much focus on the users as on the system.
Do your stores and webshop need to move to cloud Business Central?
We plan the migration around your stores, webshop and company structure. You talk to the people who build the solution — from the first meeting to operation.