A Great Team, Great Product, Great Project.

Project
For the customer EnBW, various independent systems were to be replaced and mapped on a common platform. For this purpose, a new CRM and billing system had to be introduced. It was important to realize a mass integration with SAP. In addition, possibilities for more automation and process efficiency were to be created.

System selection
In the context of a system selection, 23 systems were compared with each other. In the final, another product was evaluated in parallel to Odoo. Odoo came out on top in terms of the range of functions relevant to the project. In addition, Odoo scored well in terms of expandability for future requirements. There are many apps from Odoo and a marketplace with over 10,000 apps at the time (now over 20,000 apps), which can expand the current range of functions according to future requirements. In terms of cost, Odoo is the clear winner. Odoo thus emerged from the evaluation as the price and performance winner.

Approach
The main focus of our approach is the exploitation of Odoo's standard functionality. Therefore, we comprehensively advise our customer EnBW on the diverse business processes and functions of Odoo. Furthermore, we support the transformation of the involved organizations in the context of the introduction of new digital business processes. The major advantage of this approach, in contrast to in-house developments, is low implementation and maintenance costs. Where special requirements necessitate customer-specific extensions, we make this possible by means of suitable extension technologies. In contrast to modifications, our extensions ensure upgradeability and maintainability.

Team
The following departments have assigned their key users to work on the project:

• Product Management
• Customer Management
• Sales
  
• Billing
• Controlling/Accounting

In addition, the following departments with a technical background were involved:

• IT department
• Reporting department
• Data Protection, Security
  

The implementation was carried out by employees of SAMSA-IT and Odoo.

Project scope
The following standard apps were introduced for the customer EnBW:

    • "Contacts" for the management of customers, competitors and suppliers
    • "CRM" for lead and opportunity management
    • "Sales" for quotation and sales order management
    • "Subscriptions" for monthly and annual billing of services
    • "Accounting" for the creation of invoices, parts of sub-ledger accounting and analytical accounting with cost centers
    • "Calendar" for appointment management e.g. of customer appointments and the scheduling of activities such as             follow-ups, calls, emails and customer contacts
    • "Project" for the management of tasks and error tickets in projects
    • "Helpdesk" for the management of error tickets
    • "Documents" for document management and document archiving
    • "Dashboards" for creating user-specific dashboards with relevant data

The following apps were implemented on a customer-specific basis:

    • "Import/Export" for integration to and from SAP.
    • "Migration" for the full historical migration of data from the legacy system
    • "Activities" for the complete overview of the activities for the representative (Substitution) regulation
    • "Participation/Equity Hierarchy" for the mapping of property relationships for affiliated companies
    • "Value lists" for independent maintenance of value lists such as management level by the department (to be review)
    • "EnBW Design" for the customization of the user interface in the EnBW corporate design

Services

As the central service provider, we provided the following services in the project:
    • Requirements management
    • Business process analysis
    • Consulting
    • Configuration
    • Development
    • SAP Integration
    • Migration
    • Creation of training materials
    • User training

Challenges

The project overcame the following challenges:
Coordination. In a large organization like EnBW, there are many stakeholders with different requirements. The key to success lay with EnBW's project manager. He channeled the requirements, brought about decisions, and was the central point of contact for SAMSA-IT.
Data protection. As a large corporation, the issues of security, data protection and reliability are essential for EnBW. Thanks to the close cooperation between EnBW, Odoo and SAMSA-IT, all challenges were successfully met.
Migration. In the migration of 4,600 customers and 4,700 products, the challenges were to transfer the various data sources into a single target data model while ensuring that the many objects were correctly linked. After three test migrations and one production migration, all migration errors were eliminated.

Timeline
After clarifications and preparations in June and July 2019, implementation took place from late July to mid-October 2019. The implementation period was three months.

Go-live
We like to think back to what we saw in the faces of the team members at the go-live in October 2019: satisfaction, certainty that the right decisions had been made, and the conviction that the new processes will run properly.

Customer Feedback
The following is a summary of customer feedback:

    • The project manager was a big supporter of the Odoo rollout from the beginning.
    • The project team submitted a proposal to roll out Odoo to other departments in the group as well.
    • Several team members reported how satisfied they are with the software solution, how much the data quality has             improved and how much time they save.
    • Management is already planning Phase 2, which will expand the scope of the solution.
    • The project manager will attend the Odoo Roadshow in Stuttgart on Nov. 28, 2019, as an official EnBW representative to share the success story.

Enthusiasm factors

In the project, there were the following enthusiasm factors:

    • Sales staff have Odoo with them on their smartphones and tablets when visiting customers. This means they always have their customer data at hand and can log customer contacts on site or on the road.
    • Users can export their data from Odoo, modify it in bulk in Excel, and easily import the changes back into Odoo. This allows users to keep a handle on even large amounts of data.
    • There are many automations in Odoo, such as subscriptions that automatically generate monthly invoices. At the same time, Odoo also offers important manual intervention options, such as the ability to trigger invoice generation from subscriptions ahead of time before the year-end closing.
    • Odoo also offers an automatic solution for tricky requirements such as invoice accrual in accounting.
    • Missing functions could be purchased via the Odoo Marketplace. Specifically, an app to combine several invoice drafts into one was purchased for a one-time fee of 12 EUR.
    • The user interface was adapted to the EnBW corporate design. Wherever it is shown - on slides, in live demos, in daily use - the professional design leaves EnBW users with a feeling of "this is our system."
    • As an IT service provider, SAMSA-IT was able to discuss at eye level with the specialist departments - especially controlling and accounting - due to its technical expertise and readiness for action.

About EnBW
With over 21,000 employees, EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG is one of the largest utility companies in Germany and Europe and supplies around 5.5 million customers with electricity, gas and water as well as energy solutions and energy-related services. Increasingly, EnBW will further expand its position as a sustainable and innovative infrastructure partner for customers, citizens and municipalities. The transformation of the company towards renewable energies and intelligent infrastructure solutions is a core component of its strategy.

About Odoo
Odoo is the producer of the same-named open source solution for CRM, ERP and portals. Odoo has over 1,250 employees and over 4 million users. Key features of Odoo are extensibility via installable apps, scalability as a native cloud system, ease of use and a marketplace with over 20,000 third-party apps. In addition to customers such as the Wavestone Group and the City of Augsburg, EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG is now joining the circle of successful customers.

About SAMSA-IT
SAMSA-IT GmbH is your Odoo partner with a focus on the utility, service and retail industries. We specialize in corporations and enterprises with their specific requirements for security, data protection, reliability and scalability. We are experts in IT architecture and maintain an overview even in large heterogeneous system landscapes. In particular, with 13 years of experience, we also integrate SAP systems. We bring best-practice approaches to customer projects and drive innovation. Our specialty is linking business processes with the physical world via Internet of Things (IoT).