BERG Achieves Successful ERP Implementation with STAEDEAN's Data Migration Solution

For businesses looking to embark on a data migration journey, the success story of BERG Toys is sure to be inspiring.

As a global outdoor play equipment firm that boasted worldwide channel sales, BERG was struggling to empower its resellers to handle business on their own. Their vast data lay in a legacy ERP that was regularly shared with retailers all over the world. However, manual data entry, poor data quality, and inefficient methods of connection (such as Excel-based data sharing) hampered the quality of their operations.

Moreover, as their business expanded, BERG struggled to streamline its manufacturing, distribution, sales, and marketing functions. Although the company was headquartered in the Netherlands, the teams had to connect with resellers from different time zones for the sourcing of product parts, order verifications, and inventory checks. This not only slowed down their processes considerably but also led to data entry errors that took additional time, effort, and resources to correct.

In their search for a solution provider that could help them upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics AX, BERG approached its long-time ERP implementation partner STAEDEAN — an established Microsoft ISV specializing in the Dynamics space since 2005. As an existing customer, BERG knew that STAEDEAN had performed data migrations for 600+ customers — from legacy systems to more advanced ERP systems — and also excelled in integrating isolated business applications, without any coding or development.

In this blog, we take a look at the challenges BERG had to face in its operational journey and explore how STAEDEAN helped BERG resolve its data challenges and ensure successful ERP deployment without stress or delays.

BERG’s Challenge

Headquartered in Ede, the Netherlands, BERG Toys has been developing, producing, and selling a wide range of outdoor play equipment and premium toys since 1985. Known for their go-karts, balance cars, trampolines, scooters, and wagons, BERG is committed to providing long-lasting and high-quality products that are subject to stringent test rigs and adhere to international standards. Through a global channel of dedicated resellers, BERG currently distributes play equipment, accessories, and toy parts to retail businesses in more than 56 countries.

In 2009, BERG had partnered with STAEDEAN to implement Microsoft Dynamics NAV — an ERP platform that assists small and medium-sized companies with finance, manufacturing, customer relationship management (CRM), supply chains, analytics, and electronic commerce — as their central ERP system. Being an existing customer, they approached STAEDEAN with their business and data challenges.

Their main concern was the amount of effort needed from their end in collaborating with their dealers on a day-to-day basis and in entering the required information every time. BERG employed a dealer portal to communicate stock items, inventory count, pricing information, and product availability with their worldwide resellers. However, they needed their team to supply information to these retailers round-the-clock. This included entering and updating item and stock information manually, which often led to errors or inaccuracies. BERG was looking to lessen the burden on their own team and empower their dealers to operate by themselves, regardless of the difference in time zones.

Says Bernd Wassink, Application Engineer at BERG, “We were already giving our dealers some product and other information in their portal, but we wanted to enable them to do business on their own, no matter where they are or when they visit the portal.”

As a result, BERG’s IT team decided to update their business management technology. As they had already been managing their operations on Dynamics NAV, upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics AX seemed like the perfect decision.

BERG Chooses STAEDEAN Data Migration Solution

With BERG’s growing portfolio and its plans for global growth, the company decided to implement Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 — a powerful ERP software package for finance, operations, and supply chain management that helps global enterprises organize, automate, and optimize their processes on-premises, in the cloud, or through hybrid deployment. 

However, considering the vast amount of business data that the company had accumulated over the years, BERG’s IT team realized that performing a data migration to Dynamics AX and integrating their dealer portal and consumer webshop with the new ERP was going to be complicated, time-consuming, costly, and resource-intensive. They also needed to transfer their existing integration setup with their warehouse management system to the new ERP without any operational downtime.

This was when they decided to turn to STAEDEAN.

BERG had been relying on STAEDEAN’s industry and technology solutions since 2009, when STAEDEAN had helped them upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics NAV and had also facilitated a valuable integration between the ERP and their warehouse management system. They, therefore, decided to take advantage of STAEDEAN’s popular data migration and application integration solution to ensure a successful ERP implementation. 

How STAEDEAN Enabled Successful Data Migration and Application Integration for BERG

Armed with the knowledge of best practices in data migration and years of expertise in application integrations, STAEDEAN helped BERG design data migration messages and test them with business stakeholders as well as a selected group of key users. After making modifications based on the test results, STAEDEAN was able to help BERG run a one-click, smooth data migration to AX 2012. Their team used STAEDEAN's Data Migration Solution to transfer business data related to customers, vendors, warehouse locations, product details, and payment transactions to Dynamics AX. According to Wassink, “The STAEDEAN product worked extremely reliably and efficiently, especially compared to less successful approaches to data migration, such as an Excel-based add-in utility that we had tried out.”

STAEDEAN also enabled BERG to establish an online storefront that helped customers connect directly with the toy behemoth. Although this webshop was not as richly featured as the dealer portal, it helped customers browse through BERG’s products and find local retailers, which in the long run, improved BERG’s brand visibility.

STAEDEAN also ensured a seamless integration between BERG’s dealer portal and AX 2012, enabling resellers to be self-sufficient in handling BERG sales. They were now able to source products and parts, verify orders, and check inventory availability without making phone calls or waiting for email responses from the BERG team. Says Wassink, “Thanks to the ERP integrations we built with STAEDEAN’s efficient, business-ready software, our dealers can take care of their needs online and in real-time, speeding up the process of getting products out to retailers. Eventually, our end customers’ children benefit from that.”

Would you like to read more about how BERG created business-enabling integrations and achieved successful ERP deployment of Microsoft Dynamics AX? Read our full case study linked below.