How Dynamics 365 supports Wilo’s path to become the solution leader for a smart and resource efficient world

The Wilo Group (Wilo) is one of the world’s leading premium suppliers of pumps and pump systems for building services, water management, and industry. More than 9,000 Wilo employees in 90 offices create, deliver, and support innovative, smart, eco-friendly products and services to move water intelligently. From water heating and cooling to complex distribution and critical wastewater treatment solutions, Wilo has supplied the world with high-quality, hard-working systems since 1872. 

Avoiding rough waters

With earnings in the billions, Wilo was recording substantial growth for the past decade. Always looking to the future, Wilo leaders knew the company would benefit from further streamlined processes and more automated operational systems to better manage its worldwide business operations. “We struggled to connect our teams globally, and knew we needed a solution to bring all our business processes together,” explained Timo Veneman, Group Director, Group Information Management Business Technology & Services. 

The right solution would bring all systems—sales and marketing, customer service, finance, and warehouse and inventory control—together for a more secure, standardized, and streamlined way to do business in every geography Wilo serves. “Dynamics 365,” continued Veneman, “enabled us from initial sales and marketing touchpoints, to work order generation, to service delivery.” 

Clearing the way for growth

Wilo engaged Orbis, a Microsoft partner and digital transformation expert, to conduct a company-wide needs assessment. Orbis determined that aligning Wilo’s sales, customer service, and field service systems to achieve the growth the company envisioned required a holistic implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365. Some of Wilo’s teams were still using on-premises Microsoft CRM 2011 or CRM 2016 and urgently needed to move to a more modern platform. Modernizing with Dynamics 365 was the first priority to bring disparate global systems together, streamline business operations and financial processes, make data more accessible, and enable better collaboration in real time everywhere Wilo operated. The new system would also need to integrate with SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. The entire transformation would be a global effort, expected to be completed in 2026. 

In 2020, Wilo replaced its legacy customer relationship management (CRM) system with a clean installation of Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Insights, Customer Service, and Field Service. The Wilo and Orbis teams designed a logical, streamlined workflow that took full advantage of the centralization and automation capabilities of Dynamics 365. They replaced multiple instances of their legacy ERP solution with one central instance of SAP S4/HANA connected to Dynamics 365 using a process that syncs customer accounts, product catalog, and pricing between the ERP and Dynamics 365. Now, Wilo’s core business processes are connected and more efficient, seamlessly working together. With a newly unified SAP ERP system and cloud-based Dynamics 365 for CRM, Wilo was ready to continue its growth-path.

“Moving into the new environment of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is the beginning of a new era in customer engagement for Wilo Czech/Slovak organization. We’ve embarked on a journey to transform how we connect, understand, and grow our business together with our customers,” says Jan Cidlinsky, Managing Director Czech/Slovak. 

Wilo’s success with Dynamics 365 isn’t due solely to the implementation of a centralized system. The solution also incorporates powerful, easily integrated, low-code apps, and reports built with Microsoft Power Platform. Power BI reports and dashboards make data visible and uncover insights that help boost customer service quality. 

The initial implementation required synchronizing a large volume of data, a lot of testing, and much training to get the new system flowing. Subsequent implementations took less than six months to roll out, including fit gap analysis, setting up business units, and team training. Wilo was investing in the future in a big way, with surprisingly little business disruption. 

A wellspring of benefits

Although the move to Dynamics 365 was primarily for the benefit of the sales and field service operations, the entire company has seen a positive impact.

• Wilo has a unified and secure CRM system that will scale for future growth.
• Power Apps integration allows new functionality to be added easily as business needs change.
• Built-in compliance features reduced the need for audits and eased industry regulated reporting tasks.

A win for customers and support teams

Using connected CRM tools in a centrally managed system is a huge benefit for Wilo’s customer service and field service teams. Agents and field technicians have a 360-degree view of case status, resources, and service activities. Their daily customer contact is streamlined and more personalized with visibility to past service issues and equipment purchases. Streamlined work order generation saves time and increases order accuracy with automation and error-free order processing. With real-time access and monitoring of customer equipment data, service teams are more responsive. “By integrating every customer-facing process into Dynamics 365, we are able to achieve unparalleled transparency across all functions, thereby supporting our ultimate goal of ensuring complete customer satisfaction,” explains Daniel Studnik, Head of Cloud CRM Processes Business Cloud Consultancy, Group Information Management. 

Now, visibility to deeper business insights allows more accurate and faster decision making, maximizing productivity and quality of service so customers enjoy quicker resolution of their issues. Service agents can provide more relevant information, confident that critical data is collected in real time to easily transfer to their field teams, no matter where they’re located.

Wilo’s sales teams use the rich customer data in Dynamics 365 Sales to swiftly develop complex sales quotes. Veneman sees the impact this is making. “Connecting our ERP and CRM worlds lets us produce quotes within CRM, and then pricing is done via the ERP system. We have one single point of truth. We’ve never been better integrated,” he noted. Connected customer data, engagement history, and pricing information enables a seamless sales experience, and Power BI insights help sellers understand account trends and allow them to gain traction on favored accounts and react to opportunities more quickly. 

Early in 2021, Wilo saw a rise in earnings with the increased productivity enabled by modernization and its newly connected, intelligent system.

Taking the long view 

As Wilo continues to expand into more countries, it relies on Dynamics 365 to grow with it. Its inbound sales and service teams are looking forward to new Dynamics 365 Contact Center point of contact functionality with first-party voice and Teams telephony integration. Wilo’s field service technicians and business managers will gain from scalable resource scheduling optimization, which helps dispatchers manage more resources and territories, generate predictable schedules, and assign work based on skills. 

"Through the use of digital solutions like the mobile Field Service App, we are proud to save 1.5 million sheets of paper every year. Using Dynamics 365 is an important step towards greater sustainability, and we are convinced that by utilizing digital solutions, we can not only conserve resources, but also strengthen our competitiveness.”  says Stefan Sinnreich who is responsible for Service Information Management at Group Service.

The future looks even brighter. AI-enhanced capabilities of Dynamics 365 virtual agent chatbots will make service relationships even smarter, and Copilot will offer remarkable opportunities for automating operations, data analysis, and global communications.  

With its agile expandability, ease of integrating low-code apps to add functionality, and secure centralization of data and operations, Dynamics 365 is an intelligent, sustainable pipeline to Wilo’s future. Bastian Schiermeister, Group Vice President Group Information Management Business Technology & Services sums it up best, “Our mission at Wilo is to invent and to manage sustainable water solutions that benefit everyone, everywhere. Dynamics 365 helps us achieve our goal of becoming the solution leader for a smart and resource-efficient world.”