READY FOR THE FUTURE
Satelliet Meubelen worked with an outdated product configurator and was looking for possibilities to prepare their company for the future. Joris Heijltjes, Managing Director at Satelliet Meubelen and Edwin Waegemakers, Business Solutions Architect, explain why they chose to collaborate with Qexpertise and how that collaboration works.
Hospitality experience
Satelliet Meubelen has been the specialist in the hospitality experience for almost fifty years and supplies distinctive hospitality, project and care furniture of top quality. It is a large Dutch SME that adds atmosphere with its furniture wherever people take the time for a snack and drink. They do this with about 120 people, from different offices: the head office in Breda, showrooms in Amsterdam, Breda and Dalfsen, and a logistics center in Rijen. Satelliet Meubelen also has a number of partnerships with international parties.
Joris: “About five years ago, the then product configurator no longer met our wishes. It was too limited, difficult to manage, and we were too dependent on the supplier. So we were faced with the challenge of finding a better solution. We then started exploring the market and looked for providers of a good product configurator. After a number of discussions with several suppliers, we decided that Qexpertise was the best fit for us. ”
Qexpertise uses the software of TRIMIT, an Independent Software Vendor (ISV), which supplies specific software for the fashion, furniture industry. We can easily maintain the system ourselves. The lines from Qexpertise to TRIMIT and Microsoft are short; if there are issues, they can be tackled relatively easily. “Those were the decisive factors for us to choose the collaboration with Qexpertise,” says Joris.
Edwin: “In addition, as is the case everywhere, automation started to play an increasingly important role in ensuring that our processes run smoothly and in increasing our distinctive character. We then set up the Solutions Team. With five colleagues, we ensure that Satellite Furniture is future-proof by means of automation and process optimization.”
Good balance
“The fact that we want to do as much as possible ourselves caused some difficulties in the cooperation with Qexpertise in the beginning. Fortunately, that has now been resolved”, Edwin continues. “We have found a good balance between the things we do ourselves - such as creating a report or adding a field in a form - and the specific activities that we outsource to the Qexpertise experts. For example, if something needs to be changed deep under the bonnet, we leave that to Qexpertise. ”
“We are very satisfied with the people we work with,” says Edwin finally. “For example, Marjo Hertogh, NAV consultant at Qexpertise, specifically made a number of improvement proposals for us. For example, receiving goods at our logistics center was very labor-intensive. We had to perform many actions, which increased the probability of error. By organizing this process differently, we can now do the same work, so to speak, at the touch of a button, and fewer errors occur. In this way, she contributed very proactively to the optimization of our process. But the collaboration with Monica Randwijk, as Senior Navision Developer, Sula Heimgartner from the Planning, John Bijster for CRM and of course Marc Pit, the General Manager, also works as you would expect from a professional club. We experience a pleasant cooperation. There is a quick response and the team consists of skilled people who are also involved with our system in terms of content.”
Question, problem or challenge?
We like to think along with you.
