EVN

Twenty years ago, Els Van Nieuwenhove turned her dream into reality with the founding of EVN. The path was not without its challenges, however, but she managed to overcome them all. Today, the company, which specialises in business and safety clothing, stands like a house, thanks in part to the exceptional level of service it offers its customers. ‘We still physically visit customers to give them the opportunity to try on pieces,‘ explains Pauline Rickaert, Els’ daughter and managing partner at EVN. ‘This of course requires time and effort, but our customers appreciate the service enormously.’

Thanks to this personal service, EVN can now count many renowned names from industry, construction and transport among its customer base. ‘We are quite proud of that. Only the bigger our customer base became, the more difficult it became to guarantee the same service. We were losing too much time manually looking up items and creating orders,’ Pauline admits. To make those processes more efficient, EVN invested in new ERP software two years ago. ‘But unfortunately, that solution did not meet our expectations at all and also cost us a lot of money.’

To implement Business Central, EVN turned to IT services provider Squadron. ‘We wrote to several parties, but with them we had the best click. They also immediately understood where our bottlenecks lay and thought beyond other providers.’

From pragmatism to results

Following that, Squadron went straight to work. Business Analyst Jens Vanacker was given responsibility for the project and the migration to Business Central. ‘Given the large amount of data to be processed, we opted for a pragmatic approach,’ Jens explains. TRIMIT, a product information management software solution developed specifically for Business Central, played a crucial role in this. ‘Among other things, this tool makes it possible to centralise product information on a single platform and organise articles according to style, size and colour. This gives EVN a better insight into its stock, which shortens their time-to-market.’

Regular adjustments were also made. During the project, for instance, a module was added that groups orders per supplier in order to avoid small runs and reduce transport costs. ‘So the scope of the project gradually grew, but Squadron handled this flexibly and the extra functions have also proven their value in the meantime’, Pauline says.

An investment that also pays off

In any case, the result is worth it: EVN operates a lot more efficiently and faster today. ‘To the great satisfaction of our customers and employees. At the push of a button, they find an order back, complete with the right quotation.’ Those employees were also given time to master the new way of working. ‘A conscious choice, because the switch meant a big change for them anyway.’

Although employees are now familiar with the new way of working, the digital transformation at EVN is still in full swing. Indeed, the company continues to look ahead and is constantly looking for digital solutions that add value to their processes. ‘In time, for example, we hope to evolve towards a completely paperless working environment, in which we also digitise all tasks associated with an order.’ Squadron may also play a role in those future plans. ‘After all, thanks to them we have taken a huge step forward in terms of digitisation and automation,’ Pauline concludes.