Work our team has delivered · WHOLESALE AND DISTRIBUTION
Order-to-dispatch cut by 30% for an eight-branch wholesale distributor.
Orders arrived on four channels and were re-keyed two or three times before dispatch could see them. Our team fixed the order process first, then moved it onto Dynamics 365 Business Central with automated order intake. Order-to-dispatch fell 30%, and a better forecast cut inventory by about 12%.
↳ Some of this work was delivered by Reenva's founder and team before Reenva was formed. Client name withheld; some commercial figures shown as bands.
/01 · What changed
30% reduction in order-to-dispatch cycle, with roughly 12% less inventory once the forecast stopped guessing.
Orders now flow from email and EDI straight into Dynamics 365 and on to the dock, with no re-keying. A forecast tuned to the seasons means less stock sits idle to cover the unknown.
30%
Reduction in order-to-dispatch cycle time
~12%
Inventory reduction from a forecast tuned to the seasons
0
Re-key points between order intake and dispatch (was 2–3)
10mo
Process, cutover, stabilise, automate, in that order
/02 · The problem the team was asked to fix
The old ERP didn't crash or lose data. It just hadn't kept up with how the business ran, so staff built workarounds on top of it. Orders arrived on four channels and were re-keyed two or three times before dispatch could see them.
None of that re-keying was written down anywhere. It had built up over years, one shortcut at a time.
Dispatch couldn't release an order until the paperwork caught up. That paperwork lived in the ERP, an inbox, a spreadsheet and someone's head. An order cycle that should have taken hours stretched across a day.
Replenishment was guesswork, so branches carried extra stock to cover the gaps.
Why the last ERP replacement failed
The first attempt moved the old process, workarounds and all, onto new software. It recreated the same problem at a higher cost, and the business walked away. This time, the process was fixed first and the software fitted to it.
/03 · How the team worked
The team mapped the real order-to-dispatch path, including steps no system had recorded.
The team’s engineer started on the warehouse floor and at the order desk, not in the ERP. The bottleneck lived in the workarounds, which no system could see.
- 01 · On the floor
The team walked from order desk to dispatch dock.
The team’s engineer followed real orders end to end. They found two or three re-key points, a phone call to confirm stock, and a dock waiting on paperwork. None of it showed in the ERP, because the ERP was what staff were working around.
- 02 · Show the cost
Every workaround, on one page.
The team rebuilt the true order-to-dispatch cycle from five years of records and the off-system steps it had seen. The cost wasn’t the old system’s licence; it was every workaround added together. Once leaders saw the real cycle beside what was achievable, the case was clear.
- 03 · Re-engineer the process
Redesign the flow, then build the system around it.
The old process was not copied onto new software. Order-to-dispatch was redesigned first: one intake, no re-keys, and exceptions queued rather than chased. Then Dynamics 365 Business Central, automation and a seasonal forecast were built to enforce it.
Ten months, in the right order: understand the floor, agree the new process, then build the system. The 30% came from the process; the software made it stick.
/04 · The cost, in numbers
The cost wasn’t the old ERP. It was everything the business did to work around it.
An old ERP doesn’t fail loudly. It taxes every order quietly: a re-key here, a phone call there, a day of dispatch delay. In the end, the workarounds become the way the business runs.
↳ The team rebuilt the real cycle from five years of order and dispatch records, including steps no system recorded.
Reconstruction · 5 years of order and dispatch records
- Orders a day across 8 branches
- High hundreds
- Channels orders arrive on (email, phone, EDI, portal)
- 4
- Manual re-key points between intake and dispatch
- 2–3
Source: anonymised rebuild from 5 years of the company’s order and dispatch records, plus off-system steps the team observed. Figures shown as bands; client details withheld.
/05 · What the team did
Measure the cost first, fix the process, then build.
- /01
Diagnose.
Weeks on the warehouse floor and at the order desk, following real orders from intake to dispatch. The team mapped the re-keys, confirmation calls and dock waits that no system recorded. Then it rebuilt the real cycle time from five years of history.
Delivered: the real order-to-dispatch map, the hidden manual steps and a redesigned target process
- /02
Prepare the data.
Dynamics 365 Business Central became the ERP core across all eight branches, with data brought together in Microsoft Fabric. Five years of order history were modelled for seasonal patterns. That is the basis for a forecast that matches how the business moves through a year.
Delivered: one ERP core across 8 branches and a seasonal demand model
- /03
Build.
Automated order intake pulls orders from email and EDI straight into Dynamics 365, with no re-keying. Power Automate runs the dispatch steps, and the demand forecast drives replenishment. Orders that don’t fit the rules go to a person in an exception queue, rather than stalling the line.
Delivered: order intake with no re-keying, automated dispatch steps and forecast-led replenishment
- /04
Run and improve.
Cutover, then stabilise. The team retired old workarounds one branch at a time and tuned the forecast against live demand. It tracked order-to-dispatch weekly until the new process was simply how the business ran.
Delivered: workarounds retired, forecast tuned and a weekly operating scorecard
/06 · Technology the team used
Data layer
- Dynamics 365 Business Central (ERP core)
- Microsoft Fabric: 5 years of seasonal patterns modelled
- Data from all 8 branches in one place
- Order and dispatch events recorded
What the team built
- Automated order intake (email and EDI into Dynamics 365)
- Power Automate dispatch workflows
- Demand forecast tuned to the seasons
- Exception queue for human review
Reporting layer
- Order-to-dispatch cycle dashboard
- Forecast accuracy and inventory position
- Branch throughput view
- Returns and credit-note tracking
/07 · What changed for each team
Sales floor
The order desk stopped being a re-typing station. Orders arrive, are checked and flow through without manual re-entry. Staff spend their time on the orders that need a person, not on all of them.
Operations
The warehouse works from one clean queue instead of chasing paperwork between systems. Dispatch no longer waits for a re-key upstream. Branches carry the stock they need, not a buffer to cover the unknown.
Board
Order-to-dispatch, a number the business could never quote cleanly before, is now tracked and down 30%. Working capital freed by the ~12% inventory reduction shows in the finance pack. The risk of running the business on the old ERP is gone.
“We’d tried to replace this ERP once before and walked away. It worked the second time because they spent the first month on our floor, not in a config screen. They fixed how we work, then made the software match it.”
/09 · Your next step
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