With the growth of the company and the increase in customers and staff the way that communication and information work together has changed. Central archiving and information is essential to quickly and accurately respond to our customers. The old software was too limited to enable us to meet our new needs so an effective central system was needed.
The Company
Hertek is a dynamic and fast growing company, founded in 1993 and from 1999 has been based in De Weert, Netherlands. The organization has grown in 15 years from 6 to 110 employees and is engaged in designing, supplying, commissioning and servicing of Fire Detection, Care, and Emergency Communications. Hertek with their fire products is one of the largest companies in the Industrial Services market.
Hertek offers total solutions, with maximum ease of use, to Service industries, Health, Manufacturing and Government. The systems provide security within buildings to staff, visitors and residents. Besides providing security systems, Hertek make a significant contribution to the work-performance and flexibility of the staff.
Customer service at Hertek has nationwide coverage. The consultants, salesmen and service technicians work from home and are responsible for their region. Thus Hertek is close to its customers and employees, and knows what is happening in the Industrial Services market.
The situation
Hertek worked with several applications such as AMF, Word, Excel, Dbase. A large amount of data had to be input twice, it was a lot of work and paper forms were used. Thus sometimes things went wrong.
The choice
"The choice was made", says Peter van Setten, Commercial Manager at Hertek, "We must have a new CRM software, Costing, Quotation, and Service Projects (planning) and Maintenance (electronic service order) in one package.
When you look at the market you see a large number of software packages, but if you go deeper you see that packages, though good, do not all have coverage of all the facets of a company. Hertek has a wholesale trade function, has projects and runs a service department. It always comes down to making a choice between the package that comes closest, and where customisations should be made”.
"In our search for the right software and implementation partner we very quickly came to the conclusion that there were not many parties that could offer what we wanted. In fact there were no applications that catered fully to our demands. The choice had to fall on a package that had most of our requirements and had the ability to make adjustments easily. Ultimately, we selected Microsoft Dynamics AX and HSO as the implementation partner. At the start in February 2007, we knew where the shortcomings were, so this was a fun challenge for both parties”.
The Implementation
"Integrating a new software package in your organization is a dynamic process that never ends. As a result of the special modifications we wanted, the implementation took longer than planned. The calculation module which required input from Hertek, and developed by HSO , was integrated with the order, projects and service module. Through the hard work of Hertek and HSO people we went live January 1, 2008 and we have things very well under control. We are very pleased with the commitment and involvement of the HSO staff”.
“We had our primary focus on the implementation of the main process, and were late in starting the generation of documents and furnishing of security rights. The project implementation team was mainly drawn from Hertek IT members, afterwards we had a broader base as we had more tasks to distribute”.
The Benefits
Everything is integrated into one package and therefore Hertek now have a better overview of the overall business processes. Hertek no longer need to search for data. All the data input forms are gone and data is generally only entered once.
The future
Peter van Setten: "We have a large dealer network and in the last 5 years have strived to have 40% of our turnover achieved through electronic links with these customers. We also want to give our customers greater insight into inventory, delivery status and project status, and we want to incorporate all that information into our website. In IT we generate some information in the form of documents. We can also now generate Excel and graphical statements at a push of a button”.