Since 2012, the Ficodis group has acquired over ten companies. That is an average of two company acquisitions per day. Their team has mastered integrating new firms into their group. Discover their preferred tool: Fidelio ERP.
Ficodis is an industrial material distributor where every store is specialized in a specific field (cutting tools, power, safety and more). Acquiring new companies allows Ficodis to broaden its product and service offering, its geographical presence and its proximity to their clientele.
Ficodis created a digital transformation model following the implementation of the Fidelio ERP system. The now tried and true process simply repeats itself once a new entity is acquired. It has four main phases:
If no customization is required for the ERP software, group integration happens very quickly.
“We can integrate a new company in less than three months.”
- Christophe Bévillard, President of Ficodis
Adopting a common management system helps consolidate business processes in terms of practises, rules, management, the chart of accounts, etc. It makes it easier to unify all of the processes and regroups all of the data that will be analyzed and that the firm will want to track.
Generally, it makes integration, training and employee support easier.
Since information is centralized in one place, it is now possible for the Ficodis group to unify certain administrative functions, like accounting or purchasing. They perform better and are easier to manage. Each department’s team can spend more time on their specialties.
Once information is entered in Fidelio, it becomes linked throughout.
“When using Fidelio, wherever you are in your business process, for example, billing, you can easily find your delivery then your order, then your submission and anything else you might need. […] Everything is integrated and is properly linked.”
- Christophe Bévillard, President of Ficodis
For a distributor like Ficodis, properly managing inventory, purchasing and sales is crucial to grow . Fidelio ERP merges all this information together to allow each store to have access to the rest of the group’s inventory They can then sell products the store is specialized in and complete the order with products from the group’s other specialties. It is an asset to Ficodis
Commsoft Technologies, the developer of the Fidelio ERP software, is a human-scale company. That is what piqued the interest of the Ficodis team who appreciates being able to talk directly to the team at Commsoft. They anticipated that it would make communication easier when they eventually have development requests.
Commsoft’s professionalism in respecting its engagements and preparation all but confirmed that they would be easy to collaborate with.
Fidelio ERP’s ergonomics were also a factor when choosing to use the software. It is easy to use as the same logic applies to all its modules e.g. purchasing and sales.
The initial offer price did not change from the final price. Why? Because the team at Fidelio was well prepared and asked a lot of good questions. There were also no surprises like needing to buy licenses for external modules that were not in the initial package, as was the case with other companies.
Online retail and better warehouse management with the WMS module are attractive solutions provided by the Fidelio ERP system that the Ficodis group could adopt in the near future.
Find out why Fidelio ERP is beneficial for industrial distributors.
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