Three learnings from Hårklinikken's ERP project

More specifically, you can read about why it's a good idea to:

But the distribution of the two customer groups differs distinctly from one country to another where the enterprise has its clinics. In Denmark, 50 per cent of total sales are online, in Dubai 90 per cent of total sales takes place in the clinic, while 90 per cent of sales are online in the States.

Therefore, the bookkeeping entries of various turnover groups - such as online product sales, clinics' POS sales, consultations, discounts, campaigns, etc. - required a transfer of more detailed data to the ERP systems than a Shopify standard integration could provide.

However, the launch pad for Hårklinikken's ERP project was a combination of their existing inventory system being forced to be phased out due to 'sunset', the rapid growth challenging the management of the global inventory, and the transition to PE ownership meaning stricter requirements for the group accounts.

It was, in other words, a perfect storm and therefore Hårklinikken suddenly had to act quickly. Muvch has happened since then, and the ERP project has resulted in the implementation of the ERP system Dynamics 365 Business Central and financial modules from Continia as an integration between ERP and the Shopify webshop and POS, as well as inventory scanners.

Now, let's proceed with the experience gained following the completion of the ERP project.

Shopify offers a free standard integration in collaboration with Microsoft. And though it's comprehensive, you should expect to code special features, for example, via the code language AL for Business Central. Since business logics are often lacking in the standard integration.

In the case of Hårklinikken, the standard integration didn't, for example, support a different bookkeeping of physical sales in the clinics than of online sales. Furthermore, the standard integration is built without any controls and validations, which may have unfortunate consequences.

If you yourself are faced with a Shopify integration, it is thus a good idea to have some controls designed for validating, for example, VAT and amounts incl. VAT before the bookkeeping as such. This may, in fact, save you both time and grey hair.

And if you use a cloud version of Dynamics 365 Business Central, it could be an advantage to include a manual validation every time a new update of the Shopify integration is rolled out and before your bookkeeping is initiated again. If your bookkeeping is on automatic pilot, extremely much checking and extra work need to be done if the logics behind the VAT calculation has suddenly been changed.

Hopefully, the automated controls will find the error, but ... what if?

At Hårklinikken, we have solved this by making a BI report that reconciles turnover and VAT between Business Central and Shopify, making it easy to follow up on errors and to document the turnover in connection with month-end closing and auditing.

The most significant learning here is the importance of including in your overall budget a budget for adjustments of specially designed integrations and controls in support of your specific needs.

Last - but definitely not least - much is to be gained by reviewing the processes, rights, data structure, etc. of the system with which you want to integrate before starting the integration. Otherwise, it will most likely be an unnecesarily tough and costly affair to make the integration.

It may, for example, give rise to problems if you employees can register a sale as free text at the till. How is the ERP system to enter this? Or if you sell a package solution consisting of three articles and the articles figure only individually in your inventory. How is the ERP system to recognise the package solution and enter the sale?

By reviewing your processes, rights, data structure, etc., you find out whether your processes follow a structure that can easily be turned into a formula to be used for the integration.

Or you find out that your processes are chaotic and that you need to make a formula before starting the integration.

Many roads lead to Rome though one of them seems more obvious than others. Therefore, it could be an advantage to consider several roll-out strategies if you are to implement more processes and systems just like Hårklinikken.

We rolled oud all the processes company by company. But we could also have done it process by process across the companies. Especially in this case where Hårklinikken's former financial management system didn't have any inventory processes. Unfortunately, most companies forget to challenge the system implementation sequence because the natural thing seems to do it company by company.

Since Hårklinikken is partly owned by a private equity fund and is, as mentioned, undergoing growth, Finance experienced increased reporting and consolidation requirements. So the finance employees actually performing the reporting would have had another process rolling out the reporting process in all countries at once. And it would probably have given more peace to work, before proceeding with the remaining processes.

Nevertheless, Hårklinikken chose a roll-out company-by-company.

Among other things because Hårklinikken needed a replacement for the inventory system used by the production company as quickly as possible. Since the inventory system was suddenly removed from the market due to its acquisition by a competitor.

Furthermore, much change and restructuring occurred in, for example, Shopify. And this meant that it would have been extremely difficult to create progress regarding the commodity processes if the roll-out hadn't been done company by company.

With the benefit of hindsight, the ideal would probably have been a hybrid strategy invoving the best from the two worlds, where Hårklinikken had begun by rolling out Finance across the border and, subsequently, continued rolling out the commodity processes company by company.

Your super users are key to embedding your ERP system. Since after the implementation, the ERP consultants will proceed with their next project.More often than not, it will still be possible to be supported, but your project participants and especially your super users will be key to embedding the ERP solution in the company.

That's why it's important to talk about and clarify the roles of your appreciated project resources after go-live. So that they know what to return to and can see themselves play an important role in the embedding of the ERP system and help make learning and knowledge be rooted throughout the organisation.

If, for example, you don't have a super user acting as in-house support, there is a risk that all your employees will write about the same thing to your ERP advisor - and despite this, the knowledge is not embedded in the company next time the challenge arises.

Therefore, much business value is to be had by agreeing with your ERP supplier to appoint one in-house person through whom all dialogue with your ERP supplier should pass - to ensure internal sparring, embedding of knowledge, and efficient collaboration.