CWS International moves to the cloud, increasing agility and flexibility with Dynamics 365

From hygiene solutions in company washrooms to bed linens and uniforms at hospitals and beyond, many of the goods and services fundamental to facilities go largely unnoticed by the consumer. Companies like CWS provide not just these goods, but a holistic package of services to keep buildings running across the world.

“CWS’s business model is quite far from standard. Yes, every company tells you that. But with our rental business, we have nearly a million items at customer sites and every single piece is a rental item. We must have all that data and manage it flawlessly to deliver on our customer promise.”

Fabian Riemer, Head of Hygiene Application Services, CWS International GmbH

CWS International GmbH’s (CWS) declared purpose is to create a healthier and safer tomorrow. They offer innovative, sustainable, and digital rental solutions to improve the health and safety of their customers and their workforces. Their products include complete hygiene solutions that help to contain the spread of infections, and protective clothing that helps to prevent occupational accidents and increase safety in the workplace.

Headquartered in Germany, CWS has nearly 11,000 employees in 15 European countries and is one of the largest health and safety services providers in Europe. As a systems provider, CWS offers support and holistic services in six areas: Hygiene, Floor Care, Workwear, Fire Safety, Cleanrooms, and Healthcare.

Facing massive international growth of their vastly distributed business, CWS replaced their legacy operational solutions with Microsoft Dynamics 365 in their Hygiene and Floor Care businesses. They implemented Dynamics 365 Finance across the entire enterprise, which covers about 40 entities.

Before Dynamics 365

This story starts more than seven years ago. In 2015, CWS had a mix of customized technology solutions around the world, primarily SAP with some small, individual, industry-specific solutions in place in some countries and regions. These were on-premises versions of SAP that were reaching end-of-life and were so heavily customized that they wouldn’t work as a global template for CWS. And because they were so heavily customized, they were nearly impossible to maintain. It was also not an easy lift-and-shift to migrate to a newer version of SAP, given the heavy amount of customization. And yet, much of that customization was necessary to meet the specialized needs of CWS’s businesses.

Why Dynamics 365

CWS wanted a modern, cloud-based solution that offered continuous updates. Their goal was to have a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform that included finance as well as operations. “The strategic decision was to move as much as possible to cloud,” says Fabian. CWS was an early adopter and visionary in shifting ERP to the cloud. They wanted a reliable, well-known brand, such as Microsoft, although Dynamics 365 wasn’t even generally available yet.

“Of course, Dynamics 365 was relatively unknown at CWS [in 2015], but as we worked with our implementation partner and their ISV solution, which were a strong fit, we discovered that Dynamics 365 was a stronger fit than SAP.”

Fabian Riemer, Head of Hygiene Application Services, CWS International GmbH

Microsoft Dynamics 365 offered the flexibility to customize to meet their business needs while still allowing them to receive updates and feature enhancements. And the Dynamics 365 interface looks and feels like Microsoft Office, already in use across the business, so it appealed to CWS for its ease of use and adoption.

The Dynamics 365 hub and spoke strategy

An organization with multiple business divisions, CWS manages all the finances for its business units and financially controls them. It’s a large entity, wholly owned by the Franz Haniel Group, which needs visibility to the financials. CWS implemented Dynamics 365 Finance, including key functionality such as general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and banking. In the Hygiene and Floor Care business, they also implemented Project Operations, Supply Chain, and master data management. They currently have nearly 1,300 users across the organization.

At CWS, Dynamics 365 Finance acts as a hub, with a collection of spokes managing specific needs for different business areas. The Hygiene and Floor Care business areas run entirely on Dynamics 365, but some other business areas have their own operational systems that integrate with the Dynamics 365 Finance hub.

In other parts of the business, Dynamics 365 plays more of the spoke role to other application hubs. The Dynamics 365 solution has several major integrations, including with SAP, Salesforce, and niche field service solutions, among others.

SAP integration: To procure and replenish goods to the CWS network, CWS has a central supply organization, which is set up as its own legal entity. All direct supply is channeled through this company. Many of the goods go through a large warehouse in Germany, with various depots (distribution centers or smaller warehouses) in each region. The supply chain and the warehousing are still managed in SAP and are integrated with Dynamics 365. Orders get sent from Dynamics 365 to the SAP system, and receipts flow back into Dynamics 365 as the goods are received and stocked in inventory.
CRM integration: At CWS, Salesforce is used primarily as a customer relationship management system (CRM) and to create and manage sales quotes. Both customer data and the information around sales quotes integrate with Dynamics 365. “The quotes, including prices, flow through from Salesforce to Dynamics 365. This was one of the most complex integrations because of the cost structure differences, so it took some time to get it right, but it works,” says Fabian. The pricing, data structures, and hierarchies were very different between Salesforce and Dynamics 365. It was the flexibility of the Dynamics 365 cloud-based architecture—and the ability to modify and extend it to meet the rigid data structures flowing from the CRM—that made the integration possible.
Field service applications: CWS has a large fleet of trucks and service technicians. Special application capabilities are needed to support the technicians who drive from one customer location to the next to complete service operations. CWS runs a niche solution, which includes a mobile app that the technicians use en route and in the field. It integrates with Dynamics 365, sending service order details and other critical information back to the Dynamics 365 hub, where automated inventory postings to record material usage and customer invoicing take place.

Impacts and benefits

With Dynamics 365, CWS has realized the following benefits:

Harmonized processes and a single unified platform: With the Dynamics 365 solution, CWS has a single, unified platform for all countries and all business areas. The company took a template approach to create a single base solution that includes all their processes in all regions and business areas and is modified to meet business- or region-specific needs.
Single-entry, single system: CWS has three main systems: Salesforce for CRM, SAP for supply, and Dynamics 365 in the center running core business processes. Yet data (such as customer data) must be entered just once and is synchronized across systems.
Always up to date: CWS regularly receives updates and has had no issues with them. “Over the four years we have been live, we are always up to date. We don’t have to focus on whether the system is up to date in terms of maintenance or support. Instead, we can focus on building new features as change requests come in and increasing the value the solution delivers,” says Fabian.
Agile, modern, cloud-based platform: CWS can react quickly to changing business needs with the modern, cloud-based platform. “Now, we have a cloud-based platform which is never outdated, and we can stay on top of market trends and changes in the business,” says Fabian.
Business agility: With Dynamics 365, new business requirements can be quickly translated into system capabilities and—even more importantly—tested and deployed swiftly and reliably. This flexibility allowed CWS to introduce several new features for the business, enabling it to rapidly adapt to market and global needs. For example, CWS has supported their customers as they navigated the unprecedented global pandemic and their needs changed overnight with new discoveries about how the virus spread and new measures for hygiene and safety were required.
Integrate inorganic growth: CWS has made several acquisitions, which they were able to transition onto the Dynamics 365 platform rapidly. The flexibility inherent in the Dynamics 365 solution has enabled CWS to maintain a single instance and solution template for all countries, locations, and businesses. With this common data model and configuration, the latest changes can be brought to the business fast and the value realization is enterprise-wide.

What’s next

With implementation complete in the largest countries by the end of this year, CWS plans to additional rollouts in smaller countries. Soon the whole Hygiene division will run on one Dynamics 365 instance, with all the advantages such a centralized, composable platform brings with respect to process harmonization, business steering, cost savings, and scaling effects. Next up is CWS’s fast-growing Fire Safety division, and deeper and end-to-end integration with other modules like CRM and Field Service.

“In the past, this was never possible. You either stick to the standard template and your system gets the updates, or you heavily customize, and you run into the trap that after a couple of years you can’t maintain it and it’s out of date. That we could do so much customization in Dynamics 365, and it can still be maintained, updated—that’s the biggest winner.”

Fabian Riemer, Head of Hygiene Application Services, CWS International GmbH