After working for nearly 100 years as a business, VIOS van den Hondel has become one of the most expert and largest producers of stairs in the Netherlands. And over the course of a century where they’ve been leaders for innovative design and production, the company houses a vast amount of knowledge about both their products and the processes that go into selling and producing them. They’ve managed that knowledge and many processes for 10 years now with the help of Microsoft Dynamics NAV and the e-Con Sales and Product Configurator. Recently, they added with Compass Staircase, an application that enhances their ability to work with product-specific information and design. These fully integrated solutions have played the star role in helping them thrive in a difficult economy. In particular, e-Con has ensured that product quote to production cycles have run smoothly, and given back time for building and growing the business. Automation and integration have been essential to their continuing success—let’s explore how and why.
Turning employee knowledge into smoothly standardized processes
Selling and producing stairs requires highly specialized knowledge and a meticulous production process to ensure accuracy and keep deadlines and costs under control. With more than 80 employees and two different locations, the company relies on technology to help them transfer customer and product knowledge and provide standardized processes from the first sales call to delivery of custom goods. Since 2001, they’ve been able to automate processes and collect and analyze customer and product lifecycles in Dynamics NAV and e-Con, and make use of integration between the two systems start to finish.