When CBI and Paper Wool merged and had to move to D365FO, it had to be handled intelligently. “We didn’t see it as an IT upgrade, but a business upgrade,” says CEO Jens Engbo Norddahl.

“We used the merger to get employees to work even more collaboratively. We focused on the fact that the new system would give us an overall competence boost and help us to constantly move to the next level. We don’t want to stand still, but develop month by month.”

A project manager was permanently allocated and acted as a kind of interpreter, translating business needs into consultant language. The project manager also managed progress and objectives and was able to react quickly to conditions that typically change along the way.

The allocation of a permanent resource is something Jens Engbo Norddahl would recommend to others – whether it’s an external consultant or an internal resource.

“System-wise, it has been important for us to make maximum use of the whole of a future system, rather than just fragments of it. This is one of the reasons why we wanted as much standard as possible. Of course, business criticality must be supported, but standard goes a long way these days. “We believe in ‘the right tool for the right job’. We didn’t want to develop something that already exists. You can’t get everything in one system, so we chose to use several different systems,” says Jens.

On the document side, Lasernet was chosen to make doing business with Nviro easier, better and less complicated.

“We’ve just gone live. We’re trying to be in the Standard solution to start with – gaining experience – and the goal is that in six months we can shape the output according to our needs. the flexibility we need.

It takes commitment – from both management and employees. In order for everyone to work towards the same goal, it requires everyone to understand the objectives. “When I say, for example, that we need both uniformity and flexibility in the solution, it’s a contradiction in terms, but with dialogues and necessary compromises, a common understanding is reached”.

Testing and training

“As an employee, you have to be willing to learn and curious. And as a company, you can’t compromise on testing the system, educating users and setting aside time to learn.”

The interaction and good communication across the company has been crucial to ensure that the solution works – also in operations. “It’s not the management or project team’s system, it’s the individual employee’s system.

Employee involvement has been crucial to the success of this project. the scope. The better you understand the business, the better you can define the boundaries. which processes are critical or non-critical to support. Our employees are the ones who know the needs best and how things work in everyday life. They are the ones who have driven the project, and for that they have – very deservedly – received both credit and respect”.

“Organizationally, we created a steering group with management and a project group with employees. The latter was to provide both positive and negative feedback. This was one of the ways we succeeded in giving each project participant a sense of ownership. When we show the new possibilities to others, it is of course the employees, not the management, who present”.

The consolidation of companies has been rapid. 2 different locations were merged with different workflows and entry points.

“Change management and time are keywords you really have to respect. You never have time for a big project like this – it will always be disruptive. The trick is to be able to see through frustrations and focus on the benefits that lie ahead. You may not get a lot out of the investment in the first year, but if you keep developing the business step by step, it becomes easier to see the point of the madness.”

The project had a short deadline and fixed terms. Still, the expectation was that we would be up and running on time and on budget.

“The implementation was Tabellae’s Best Practice for Fixed Price. What Tabellae said they could and would deliver, we got – it was exactly as defined.

There have been no disruptions in terms of having to revisit things. This is important as business systems become more complex. Therefore, solution configuration is becoming more central than years ago.”

“We are at the finish line. Then it’s up to us to take the next step, correct and maintain the system. Every quarter we have a meeting where, among other things, we conduct an infrastructure audit to ensure that the business processes are optimally supported.

We have become able to target communication in invoices, order confirmations, etc. We’ve gained the flexibility to be both customer-specific and order-specific in terms of those we do business with, while we will soon be able to offer an EDI module that will save us money in our customer interactions. My employees and I are looking forward to the continued development,” Jens concludes.