B2B company Green Comfort moves into the D2C market

Introduction

Who is Green Comfort?

Green Comfort is based in Randers and has produced shoes, sandals and other footwear since 1994. As the name suggests, their focus is on footwear that is both comfortable to walk in and produced without leaving a large (foot)print on the environment and the climate.

So it has to be good for your feet – and for the planet.

Visit Green Comfort.

Only sold through retailers – but also wanted to sell to consumers

Green Comfort sells their shoes through retailers and partners, and you can find them in almost 300 stores across the country. But Green Comfort also wanted to sell directly to the consumer through a webshop.

The problem was that their ERP (Dynamics NAV) was outdated, while their webshop was “glued” to it. And that made it difficult for them to open a webshop that lived up to the expectations customers have today.

They simply lacked strong integrations. So they contacted Connectify.

What was the challenge?

An “old” ERP that could not be developed further

At Green Comfort they were stuck with a legacy solution when it came to their ERP (Dynamics NAV). Dynamics NAV may have been good when they bought it, but it could no longer live up to the expectations companies have of an ERP today.

At the same time, it was not possible to develop Dynamics NAV further. So in that sense they needed something new.

A webshop that was glued to the outdated ERP

They also faced the challenge that their webshop was inseparably tied to the outdated Dynamics NAV. And that meant the webshop, too, quickly became “old” and could not live up to customer expectations.

To put it another way: they wanted to drive Formula 1, but only had an old Opel Kadett.

Fortunately, that can be solved with a new ERP, a new webshop and flexible integrations.

Read more: NAV webshop: optimise your webshop with a Microsoft Dynamics NAV integration

What was the result?

The 3 most important changes

1. Integration between 365 Business Central and Shopify Plus (from TRIMIT)
2. Handling of prices, products and sales – across several markets
3. Handling of logistics between ERP and webshop for D2C

New ERP, new webshop and new integrations

First and foremost, Green Comfort had Dynamics NAV replaced with 365 Business Central from TRIMIT. TRIMIT is a fully integrated solution within 365 Business Central, developed specifically for companies working in fashion. That makes it a perfect match for Green Comfort.

In addition, they replaced the old webshop with Shopify Plus.

And instead of gluing the new webshop to their new ERP, we made sure to build integrations between the two, so that Green Comfort got a Formula 1 car instead of the old Opel Kadett.

All data is synchronised across several markets

Since Green Comfort sells to several markets, keeping track of prices, products and sales across the markets can take some effort. But with integrations from Connectify, all the different data is always synchronised. So what is in 365 Business Central is also what is in Shopify Plus. And vice versa.

That saves Green Comfort a great deal of manual work, potential duplicate work and dissatisfied customers who have just ordered new sandals that turn out not to be in stock after all.

Because with the integrations, data is always in sync.

Read more: TRIMIT integration and TRIMIT integration: the 5 biggest mistakes to avoid

Control of the logistics between ERP and D2C webshop

As you probably know, there is a lot of logistics between your ERP (365 Business Central, for example) and your webshop (Shopify Plus, for example) that can cause a fair amount of hassle. The two simply do not talk to each other on their own. At the very least it requires a number of hands-on workarounds that can easily end up taking more time than they save.

That is why integrations are an important element when the logistics between ERP and webshop have to run fully automatically, so you can spend more of your time helping your customers.

And that is exactly the part we mainly helped Green Comfort with. So they could fulfil their dream of entering the D2C market – with integrations and without hassle.

Read more: Take full control of your brand with DTC: a guide to selling directly to the consumer and Get your data under control with TRIMIT

We helped Green Comfort in 4 steps

We carried out a thorough analysis

We looked at the systems they use today and compared them with the needs they have right now. Companies often have systems and integrations that were good for them 2 years ago, but are now outdated.

Either because the technology has moved on, or because the company’s needs have changed. Often it is both.

We found the biggest errors and opportunities

In our analysis we identified the biggest errors and opportunities. These may be security issues or errors in the way the systems are supposed to talk to each other.

We also find the biggest opportunities to improve the company’s workflow, so they can save time and resources.

We presented our proposed solution

We then present our proposal for possible changes. We know that you know your business better than we do, so we listen to your input in order to arrive at exactly the right solution for you.

Because no two webshops are the same.

We built the best solutions – and tested them thoroughly

Finally, we developed and implemented the tailored solutions and tested them thoroughly, so they were ready to slot straight into the working day and the workflows at Green Comfort.

And we make sure that everything works together.