TVision Technology Limited
Enotria Winecellars
Enotria Winecellars is a leading distributor of fine Italian wines to the off- and on-trade sectors, dealing with leading multiple grocers and retail specialists, as well as serving in excess of 1500 restaurant accounts across the country. These include household names such as Conran, Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges.
"With the unrivalled support and expertise of TVision helping us maximise the value of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, there is absolutely no business reason to change it in the foreseeable future." Eileen Beadle, IT Consultant at Enotria Winecellars
Business Challenge
Enotria Winecellars is a leading distributor of fine Italian wines to the off- and on- trade sectors, dealing with leading multiple grocers and retail specialists, as well as serving in excess of 1500 restaurant accounts across the country. These include household names such as Conran, Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges. Enotria’s existing bespoke system had inherent problems, no opportunity for development as the company grew, and no support.
The Solution
The initial brief was wide-ranging to allow the maximum potential solutions to be considered. However, Enotria’s former experience meant that it would now favour a larger company with an off-the shelf product that had a high degree of customisation. The initial list therefore comprised 30 different suppliers. The procurement team headed by Beadle initially met with a representative from each vendor and compared the solutions with a definitive requirements list that had been compiled by a senior management team within Enotria. This soon reduced the shortlist to seven. Several directors from Enotria visited each of the remaining prospects to carry out further investigations, often involving in-depth workshops.
Finally only three companies remained, and in mid 2001, the decision was made in favour of a Microsoft® Dynamics NAV™ based solution from Microsoft Dynamics NAV partner, TVision Technology Ltd.
Beadle explains the reasons behind the decision. “It really was the excellent combination of product and company. TVision spent considerable time pre-contract confirming their understanding of what Enotria required and carried out a first class presentation of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution on a workshop basis. All concerned could see how Microsoft Dynamics NAV would be a superb fit to our requirements and that TVision understood our anxieties and requirements for the project".
“With Microsoft Dynamics NAV being a global product, supported by a sizeable reseller network, we would never be left in a situation of having an unsupportable product,” continued Beadle. “Moreover, the system uses a modern architecture which when combined with being very intuitive to both customise and use means that we can handle much of the support requirements internally. The fact that it was one of the less expensive alternatives was a bonus.”
The implementation commenced in November 2001 comprising an enterprise-wide solution with 50 users on a SQL server platform and was conducted at all times to minimise any disruption to Enotria’s customers. Beadle again, “It was essential that the implementation happened as invisibly as possible to our customers. We set ourselves the date of June 10th and everyone within the company worked together as a team to ensure we met this date.” This involved noting all the existing business practices used within the company and configuring the Microsoft Dynamics NAV system to mirror these to ease the transition between systems.
It became apparent even during this set-up period that the Accounts functionality was far more powerful than the outgoing system and that several cumbersome practices could be performed much more efficiently.
In terms of preparing the system for the go-live date, TVision transferred the static data three weeks beforehand, which allowed a period of parallel running to ensure that the configurations had been set correctly. All live and dynamic data was transferred the weekend of the 8th – 9th June and Enotria went live with Microsoft Dynamics NAV as planned on June 10th.
The first week of any system go-live is critical and Beadle was impressed by how smoothly the transition went, and by the expertise and assistance provided by TVision. “It is one thing to use a system in a training context and another in a live context when any problems can have real life consequences on our customers. As a whole however, people quickly got to grips with the new system. One of the first benefits that became apparent was that people could follow not only what the system was doing but why. This greatly increased confidence which, combined with the absence of unnecessary manual work-arounds, had a positive effect on staff morale.”
Conclusion
Three months later and Beadle is optimistic about the future. “There is obviously a lot more functionality to be explored – especially in the area of customer relationship management. We anticipate that this will be our next development and one which will deliver significant advantages to our sales force.” She concludes, “While we are aware it will take time for many benefits to become apparent, perhaps the greatest benefit the system has already achieved is that it did not interrupt in any way our ability to provide first class customer service.”
"It really was the excellent combination of product and company. All concerned could see how Microsoft Dynamics NAV would be a superb fit to our requirements and that TVision understood our anxieties and requirements for the project." Eileen Beadle, IT Consultant at Enotria Winecellars
