Data migration for Eichholtz
Eichholtz is one of the world’s leading lifestyle businesses in the field of interior design and is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
Founded in 1992 by Theo Eichholtz, the company has grown in the past years to one of the world’s most well-known and reputable wholesalers of interior design, lighting, and accessories.
30 years of Dutch design
With the combined experience of over 150 skilled professionals, a warehouse of 45.000 m2 and a Grand Showroom of 4.500 m2, Eichholtz has furnished over 10.000 prestigious hotels, restaurants, clubs, and shops globally.
Growth ambitions Eichholtz
Ruben Alebregtse, CFO at Eichholtz, shares: “After the takeover by Private Equity in 2019, our goal at Eichholtz is to double our sales within 5 to 6 years. With a sales increase of 25% in 2021 we’re well on our way to meeting this goal.”
America
“A main pillar of the growth strategy is the United States. To stimulate growth there, we’ve started working with a 3rd party warehouse in 2019 and opened a showroom in North Carolina.”
Supply chain efficiency
“Naturally, this continuous growth, requires adjustments in the organization, including the need for more efficient logistics.”
Video of the exclusive visit to the Eichholtz warehouse and the Grand Showroom.
Opening flagship store in Miami
“This summer we’ll open two flagship stores, one in the Design District of Miami, USA, and one in the PC Hooftstraat in Amsterdam.
These stores will contribute to our growth, branding, and name awareness and they’ll work as an example for the retailers and partners who sell our products.”
Collaboration Philipp Plein
“We’ve also started a collaboration with fashion designer Philipp Plein. He’s been one of our loyal customers for years and approached us with the idea to create a Philipp Plein home collection together. Enabling us to reach a broader audience in the high-end market.”
Investing in IT and Logistics to facilitate growth
“ We’ve looked into systems that could help facilitate our growth and increase the efficiency in our logistic processes. The optimization of the supply chain is of great importance to us in the context of the new warehouse in the USA, the ambition to open more regional warehouses, and reducing our carbon footprint to meet our ESG goals (Environmental Social Governance). When starting the project of a new ERP, you run into more issues. How do you make sure the system is also future proof? ”
New ERP system
Eichholtz chose to implement the ERP system Business Central, the Tradecloud supplier portal, and the Productlabel vendor portal of Type 2 Solutions.
Scalability and Flexibility
Jeroen Raijmakers, IT Director at Eichholtz, explains why this was chosen.
“The core of the matter here is flexibility and scalability. We have a limited number of resources, especially if you’re talking employees, to realize our ambitions. If your IT can support you in efficiency, the investment is more than worth it.”
Interview with Jeroen Raijmakers about data migration and data quality.
Shaping IT-architecture that supports growth
“ Given the speed with which we’re growing, you want your IT landscape to be able to scale up. From an IT perspective, that scalability can only be achieved in a single way. You have to use systems for what they’re designed to do and keep customization at a minimum. When you do hit the limits of your capabilities, especially of your ERP, you need to evaluate how to optimally support your processes and how to shape your IT-architecture. ”
Development Productlabel vendor portal
“The ERP has standard document generation abilities, we do, however, have specific requirements when it comes to box labels. These boxes are consumer packages. There’s simply a limit, design-wise, you run into with an ERP.
We also want to prevent back and forth emails with the suppliers. We want to communicate in a standardized, structured manner.”
Uniform shipping mark labels
“Using the Productlabel supplier portal, all 120 suppliers can globally generate barcode labels in a user friendly and secure manner. They can also use it to print the shipping labels.
Not just for Eichholtz, but also for the newly designed Philipp Plein home collection.”
Interview with Dennis Hendriks, Operations Director, about the Productlabel vendor portal and data quality management.
Collaboration with T2S
“We got to know Type 2 Solutions in a previous collaboration for data migration and quality.
We had a lot of data pollution in our Navision system. We didn’t have a CRM, so everything went into the ERP. After a first data quality scan, performed by Type 2 Solutions, we knew how to approach the data quality issue and we started with customer data,” shares Ruben.
Data Quality Monitor
Eichholtz now uses the Data Quality Monitor on a daily basis, to monitor, manage, and optimize the quality of customer and vendor data.
Data migration to Business Central
“Our next step was to switch to Business Central. How were we going to tackle the quality issues? After a call about the Productlabel portal I spoke to Jack de Hamer from Type 2 Solutions about the ongoing migration,” voices Jeroen. “We’ve included Type 2 Solutions in the last trial conversion and go live, quite late in the process. Without the help from Tim van Tongeren, data specialist at T2S, we couldn’t have done the conversion like we did.”
Data Migration Platform works like a charm
“Tim helped us perfectly. He provided us guidance in the project. The system Type 2 Solutions uses, the Data Migration Platform in combination with the Data Quality Monitor, works like a charm. We continuously had a reference point available during the migration process; this has been migrated, this had been uploaded and these are the differences. The customer data was migrated smoothly, due to the preparation we had with the data quality project.”
Cleaning in advance ensures smooth conversion
Ruben elaborates with a practical example: “From a conversion perspective, we have a lot of products as well as a lot of different data fields. Tim saw very quickly that there were differences in the new weight, which is a crucial element for shipments. It was very nice to be alerted of this beforehand, rather than after the go live. Now, a fix was possible without a business interruption. We fixed the upload during the weekend.”
Satisfied with the end result
“You can completely prepare a new system. Without a solid data conversion, you can’t go live properly. The fact that we’ve been able to go live so smoothly, is for a large part in thanks to Type 2 Solutions. So, naturally, we’re very satisfied with the result.”
Lessons learned
For organizations that are transitioning to a new system and are facing a data migration, Ruben and Jeroen have the following tip:
Start on time
“To me, it’s obvious to involve Type 2 Solution sooner in the conversion process. The main challenge we faced, literally the wall we walked into, was the go live date. With certain points, we really had to be pragmatic. If you’re able to tackle these issues earlier, discuss them ahead of time, and outline the approach, you’re able to migrate in a structured manner”, according to Jeroen.
Ruben adds, “We were too late in picking up the conversion, this created a large time constraint for Tim. T2S reacted very positively; the issue is known, let’s work on how to fix it. Their approach was constructive from the get-go.”
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