GWS corporate group has secured another customer in the Independent Automotive Aftermarket (IAM) sector. EUROPART Holding GmbH, based in Hagen, Germany, is Europe’s No. 1 in the commercial vehicle parts trade. The first order was to transfer the basic data throughout Europe into the Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations already by mid-2020. The initial sub-project, which involves 27 countries and millions of data sets, is another milestone in EUROPART Holding GmbH’s multi-stage digitization strategy.
EUROPART operates with over 300 stores in 27 countries across Europe and aims to achieve two important goals. The first one is streamlining and concentrating the basic data. Secondly, the cloud will enable around 1,700 EUROPART employees to access current data in real time in follow-up projects.
Olaf Giesen, CEO of the EUROPART Group, explains: “We realized that further growth of our company depends on a streamlined IT structure and digitized business processes. With the start of the first project phase, we create a solid foundation for future decisions.”
The aim is to eliminate current system discontinuities by using Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, to digitize manual processes and to optimize existing structures along the supply chain into a digital future. GWS’s approach to implementing this project is an agile process involving several smaller steps. GWS conducted a comprehensive and detailed pilot project and a fit/gap analysis on the results of which it plans to base the project. It is planned that all 27 countries belonging to the EUROPART Group will use a standard cloud solution by 2022 in order to be even more powerful, faster and more efficient. Dieter Jester, overall project manager and Head of IT of the EUROPART Group: “Monolithic ERP systems are increasingly losing importance. In the age of digitization and artificial intelligence (AI), open solutions in cloud platforms that can adapt flexibly to the rapidly growing international requirements and process changes of our industry are virtually without alternative.”
Another success for GWS
Securing the EUROPART Holding GmbH contract demonstrates once again the leading position of GWS in the IAM sector. Several companies from across Europe have already placed orders with the IT specialist in recent months. The main focus of these is the company-wide introduction of the Microsoft solution Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and, based on this, the industry solution gevis ERP | AX. In addition to the long-standing partnership with Microsoft, GWS’s vast expertise in IAM and its size played an important role in these successes. The company now aims to further expand its position in the market.
