How Heveck VriesVers became future-proof.

Bottlenecks

Heveck VriesVers had been using and developing the Cobol application for 30 years. The technology of the application was severely outdated. The user interface no longer met the requirements of a modern workforce. For example, navigation within the application could only be done with the keyboard and the backend was out of date.

Departing staff led to loss of knowledge. Many operations were done manually and good documentation was lacking. The process knowledge and handling of the system was in the employees' heads and had been gained from years of working with the application. Transferring this knowledge proved challenging and the onboarding process could take months.

With all the advancements over the past three decades, the application was no longer scalable, flexible or efficient. The application could not be integrated with modern systems or interfaced with other applications. It was a challenge to find a Cobol developer and other developers did not dare to venture into the development of the application. Process optimizations and efficiencies could not be implemented and small adjustments often did not have the desired results. All this resulted in even more annoyances and frustrations among the staff.

All this caused the competition to overtake Heveck VriesVers left and right. Where the organization could not take innovative steps, such as picking orders using barcodes, the competition could. Heveck did have to take the step toward modernization.

From 1980 to 2020

The question posed by Heveck VriesVers to fizor. consisted of three components:

1. 1. How do we make Heveck VriesVers future-proof again?
2. 2. How does Heveck VriesVers access development capacity?
3. 3. How will Heveck VriesVers become scalable, innovative and flexible again?

The ERP system was completely replaced by an application developed on the Thinkwise Platform. Heveck VriesVers' requirements for the ERP system were:

• – Scalability: new applications and innovations must be quick and easy to link or integrate,
• – Future-proofing: the application should last another 30 years,
• – Knowledge retention: the ERP system must be intuitive and quickly learnable. In addition to that, it must be code current and easily optimized at all times.

The new application was developed modularly in sprints and delivered all at once. To verify that the new ERP system worked flawlessly, the Cobol application ran alongside the new application for one more month.

The result

The result is a modern ERP system that moves with the organization. Thanks to the UI upgrade, navigation within the application is mouse-driven, intuitive. The increased usability has shortened the onboarding process by months.

Heveck now has automated processes in order processing, route planning and forecasting. The optimization process within order picking has been completed and this is now done using barcodes and scanners instead of paper in hand.

Thanks to the new application, Heveck VriesVers is agile again and can move with the market. For example, they quickly realized a quick win with the implementation of a portal where customers can track the accuracy of deliveries.

Whatever the business vision, Heveck VriesVers has an ERP system that knows no limit and into which any desired application can be integrated and optimization and efficiency measures can be implemented.