WoodUpp customer case

ERP system: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS
E-commerce platform: WooCommerce

WoodUpp produces remarkable, sustainable wooden products for private customers, including restaurants, hotels, office environments, and other exciting projects worldwide. By serving customers through their various webshops (Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium), they continue to grow and deliver excellent products to their clients. To ensure that web orders are processed correctly in their Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP, WoodUpp utilizes the Tinx WooCommerce Connector.

Martin Rosenkvist Petersen, Business Development Manager at WoodUpp, shares his experience with the Tinx WooCommerce Connector.

“Customers have the option to visit our warehouse in Denmark and take a look at our showroom to purchase the panels directly, but we do not have physical stores. You could say we are a 100% online e-commerce company, focusing our marketing and sales exclusively on our webshops. Since we are a 100% online e-commerce-focused company, we need to ensure that our systems work and communicate seamlessly with each other, that everything is connected to our webshops, and that our business system is fully operational at all times. We are entirely dependent on IT systems and webshops.

“We always enjoy coming up with innovative ideas and new products, alongside improving existing ones. As a company, we constantly think about how to enhance and develop. Part of our strategy is also expanding as a company.

“We are based in Denmark and sell to most parts of Europe. We have our own branches in Sweden, the Netherlands, and France. Additionally, we also collaborate with partners in Germany, the UK, Switzerland, Austria, the USA, and Spain. We export many products to both Western and Eastern Europe.

Tinx WooCommerce Connector grows with our company

“In the beginning, we engaged in a dialogue with our consultants to implement and integrate our Business Central (BC) ERP with our WooCommerce webshops. BC does not inherently support a WooCommerce Connector, so we quickly realized that we needed a third party to make this happen for us. We started searching in Microsoft’s AppSource using keywords like WooCommerce Connector or WooCommerce implementation. We explored a bit, but soon we found Tinx quite interesting. Particularly, the description on the front page of AppSource caught our attention. We also needed a connector that could take us to the next levels, not just one that could provide the functionalities we needed at that moment but one that could evolve with us over time.

“As a result, we got in touch with Tinx and became more interested in what you had to offer in terms of products and services, gaining more knowledge about Tinx as a company. We had several productive discussions with the sales department and consultants during various meetings, and I believe we found a great match.”

“When you’re implementing a new large IT system in a relatively short period of two months, as we did, there will always be many new challenges. So, the implementation of the WooCommerce Connector was another step in that journey. With the challenges occurring in both Business Central and WooCommerce, we actually, together with Tinx, found a good balance between what we needed in the connector and what data we needed to import from WooCommerce into Business Central. This way, we could track the WooCommerce orders that needed to be recorded in Business Central.

“I think you can’t implement such systems without facing challenges. But the most important thing is that we could resolve the issues that arose fairly quickly, in collaboration with you. In doing so, we also learned more about our company and the potential of the connector. I think it’s a great learning process to start from scratch, as we did, and develop knowledge together with the Tinx team about what our company needed and what data needed to be integrated from the WooCommerce side to Business Central. It’s been a great learning experience.

“We had a test version of Business Central and simultaneously went live with 5 WooCommerce connectors. That was very exciting! It was wonderful to work with a partner who was so dedicated, even working on weekends to meet our deadline. When we went live on Saturday and Sunday, we, in collaboration between you and our WooCommerce partner Bo-We, gradually launched the integration. Your consultants, Sam Weel and Kasper Dissel, were very helpful and explained the different options very easily. We had several online meetings, and I really appreciated that we had a direct Teams chat between WoodUpp and Tinx. We could simply write a question, and not long after, we’d receive a response stating that it was resolved or at least providing an option for how to solve it. We are a company where young people work, and communication with Tinx was pleasant, fast, and easy. Not very formal, as you can sometimes experience with email communication.”

“We wanted a new business system that could elevate us to a higher level, allowing us to better understand our market, our company, and our customers. This way, we could start analyzing which customers are buying our products and which products sell the most, among other things. That’s why we chose Business Central. However, since Business Central doesn’t have a direct connector to connect with WooCommerce, a problem arose. We needed to import data from WooCommerce into Business Central to, among other things, perform the analyses. That was the biggest challenge.”

Current Biggest Challenge

“I would say maintaining composure within our organization. We are a company that operates at high speed, and the biggest challenge is to keep up with it.”

Solution for WoodUpp

“We were looking for one solution, a straightforward solution that had good visibility and was easy to understand. Behind the scenes, it’s quite complex, but on the front end, it had to align with the online business we conduct. We didn’t want to waste a lot of time without a clear overview of our sales and customers. Also, the integration needed to be stable, and we didn’t want a connector that would take a lot of time when issues arose. The connector requires a constant and stable flow that we can rely on 100%.

“As part of our expansion strategy, we needed a connector that had the potential to improve and develop our business in this area.”

Reasons for Choosing Tinx

“The fact that you have a professional team, excellent communication, and a good and stable connector that we saw the potential for within our company in terms of expansion and growth for the future. Also, the fact that you are a serious and professional business partner.”

Data Flows & Tinx Connector Functionalities

“We import webshop orders from our WooCommerce webshops directly into a webshop order table in Business Central. Together with your team, we ensured that the web order is only created in BC once the web order has reached a certain status in WooCommerce. This was crucial for us because we didn’t want to waste time on orders that had been cancelled in WooCommerce but were still being created in Business Central as sales orders, which we then had to delete. So, we were looking for a flexible connector to easily set conditions for when orders should be transferred to Business Central.

“We also implemented a reference order number in the sales header to track the order from the moment it is placed in the webshop until it is booked or delivered to the customer. There is no doubt about which order belongs to which customer. For example, when our finance department creates an overview or analysis of the past six months regarding revenue, we can easily track where the orders are coming from and how they move within the system. I think what we’ve accomplished together is very successful.”

“We will probably consider doing that. In the beginning, during the scope sessions, we discussed whether it was necessary to import each customer individually instead of using one generic customer per country from WooCommerce to BC. We were aware that your connector could handle both options, so we thought about it, and for now, we decided to go with the generic customer option. However, it could be an excellent idea for the future to import every webshop customer from every country into BC, as there are many additional marketing opportunities with the extra customer data that becomes available.”

For example:

• E-mail marketing: “If we have the customer information and consent.”
• More specific data analysis of our customers and product purchases.

Experience with Tinx WooCommerce Connector & Benefits

“The benefit is that we can finally register our webshop orders and webshop products. We know what we are selling and where the sales are going. Before using the connector, we had a very limited view of what we were exporting from our webshops. We could only see this data within WooCommerce. While WooCommerce is a great e-commerce platform, it’s not primarily a system for conducting business analysis like Business Central. So, that was essentially the key part of the connector. It needed to export the right data that we could use for the future to become wiser and smarter about our customer base and the products we sell.”

“With this data, we can make decisions about business processes to expand and improve our company. If you want to grow as a manufacturer and business, you need to know where there is potential interest in your product and where there is potential to expand in an existing market or penetrate a new market.”

Main goals in the coming years

“To create new products for our customers so they can create even better spaces and quality of life in their homes and businesses. Also, to gain more knowledge in terms of being creative with our existing products, being smarter about our own business, and growing along with interesting trends in our field.”

“By using the Tinx WooCommerce Connector, the necessary data to achieve the above goals is available in Business Central.”

Most impressive about the Tinx WooCommerce Connector

“The WooCommerce Connector looks very simple to us, in terms of using the connector. I mean, the user interface of the connector. But I know that behind the scenes, it’s quite complex and highly advanced. So, the most impressive thing is that you’ve made the connector very straightforward, easy, and accessible for a company like ours, and that’s what we wanted to achieve. As a rapidly growing company, we needed a partner like Tinx to quickly and easily handle things and not make it too complicated for us to understand. Ultimately, people need to be able to work with the connector daily without frustration!”

“That you are a highly professional and efficient partner who solves problems! Tinx listens to you, addresses all your questions, and finds solutions to make it work for you, even if it’s not part of the original connector’s base code. Tinx will always try to find a way to make it happen and, as a result, try to meet your needs. At least, that’s been my experience!

“Another aspect we were very optimistic about was that even though we had to implement five connectors simultaneously, the implementation was faster than the initial estimates. It shows that you don’t just send out a quote and stick to it, but even if you are more efficient, you are reliable enough to say that less time was used than the initial estimate. As a result, you billed less than expected based on the initial quote. It shows that you are both reliable and efficient.”

Solution Provided