After four years in development, Aartsen marked the launch of its ERP system, Fresh, on Friday. It was developed in-house in partnership with Thinkwise. Employees were honored as thanks for this mega-project, and the going live was officially celebrated.
"We opted for 100% customization," says project leader Mathijs Buzeijn. "The standard packages available on the market couldn't meet our needs. So, our in-house eight-person project team and Thinkwise's partners created this proprietary system. The app reflects all the processes in detail, giving us a sustainable automation solution. That ensures our company will remain at our sector's forefront for the next decade."
"We did intermediate releases, but going live is the big bang. This 'thank-you' to our staff is certainly well-deserved. We've tested the system extensively with 25 key users, which demanded a lot from the organization. We began as a Volkswagen Polo, now we're a Mercedes S-Class. That's no mean feat. We tested the system on weekends and Mondays - our busiest sales days - so going live took plenty of energy, but the results are worth it," explains Martijn.
"By joining forces, we built an application that links entirely with Aartsen's logistic, commercial, and financial processes. That will benefit our employees and our local and overseas business partners, and makes us future-proof. All processes were fully analyzed and reduced to one basic process, which provides much more structure. This structure also gives us insight. We can, thus, for instance, answer customer questions in especially the commercial processes much faster."
"We want to sincerely thank our clients for their patience and understanding. We informed them about the process all along. However, during a new system's development phase, experiencing some inconvenience is unavoidable. With this going live, we've optimized the entire process and can keep growing along with our customers," continues Martijn.
"The new Fresh ERP package will be used at the Dutch and Belgian warehouses. We're currently working hard to develop a suitable app for our Hong Kong branch. We'll integrate that completely within Fresh, so the entire Aasten group has a single solution."
For now, Aartsen has no ambition to market the ERP system more widely. "Aartsen is a fairly unique company in the sector, and the package is developed entirely on our organization. We still have plenty of projects on the go for further internal digitization. Fresh is just the beginning. We'll take the next IT steps soon. This going-live is phase 0; we already have another four phases planned," concludes Martijn.
For more information:
Aartsen
Tel: +31 (0) 765 248 100
Website: www.aartsen.com