Streamline Aquatics

STREAMLINE AQUATICS PREPARES FOR CONTINUING GROWTH: MIGRATES ERP TO THE CLOUD TO STREAMLINE FINANCIAL, INVENTORY, AND VENDOR MANAGEMENT  

WESTERN COMPUTER DEPLOYS MICROSOFT DYNAMICS 365 BUSINESS CENTRAL CLOUD TO HELP RETIRING FOUNDERS TOP OFF THEIR LEGACY 

THE SOLUTION 

For co-founders Chris and Dawn Peck, their focus was on the legacy they would leave behind as they planned their retirement after more than 40 years in the commercial pool industry. Now the president and vice president respectively of the company, Chris and Dawn sold Streamline Aquatics to new owners in 2020. Since that time, revenues increased 3X under the guidance provided by Chris and Dawn.  

However, by operating on the on-premises QuickBooks accounting system, the company’s growth was starting to run into roadblocks. “Our distributed sales teams did not have real-time visibility into inventory availability,” Chris explains. “They had to call the warehouse and ask someone to look. This slowed down our sales order process.” 

Adds Dawn, “With our rapid growth, we also found it challenging to manage the inventory levels of the thousands of products we stock, and tracking costs to measure margins required a lot of manual work.”  

With retirement on the horizon in 2024, Chris and Dawn wanted to establish more efficient and automated processes for the company to handle customer orders, vendor purchase orders, and warehouse activities. They envisioned setting the stage for even greater growth in the future. 

“Should the new leadership team desire to expand the sales territory nationally, we wanted to implement an ERP platform in the cloud,” Chris says. “If we had stayed with QuickBooks, that would not have been possible, and managing the orders of our current customer base and our vendors would have continued to be difficult.” 

To migrate the company’s ERP platform to the cloud, Chris and Dawn chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud after also considering Oracle NetSuite and a Salesforce solution. They discovered that the cost of Dynamics 365 Business Central was lower. The Microsoft solution gives the company the flexibility to increase and decrease user licenses as Streamline Aquatics goes in and out of busy seasons each year and the employee headcount fluctuates. 

“We found Business Central to be easier to configure according to our unique workflows,” Chris points out. “NetSuite and Salesforce would have required a lot more work to set up and maintain over time.” 

To design, deploy and support the Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud solution, Chris and Dawn vetted three Microsoft solution partners that ranked high in online research. After meeting with all three partners, Western Computer emerged as the best fit in aligning with the Streamline Aquatics culture. 

THE BENEFITS 

After understanding the ERP needs of Streamline Aquatics and configuring Business Central to meet the requirements, Western Computer demonstrated its flexible and collaborative approach by pausing the project during the spring and summer of 2023. This allowed Streamline Aquatics to avoid business disruptions during its busy season. 

Western Computer then deployed the solution in the cloud and transferred the QuickBooks data so Streamline Aquatics could begin using Business Central at the beginning of 2024. “Our sales team now has real-time visibility into inventory availability,” Chris says. “When visiting customer sites or taking customer calls, they can submit sales orders that we can immediately fulfill because we know with certainty that the products are in stock. We also know when a product is out of stock to consider alternatives or inform the customers as to when the back-ordered product will be available.” 

Managing the supply chain is a lot easier as well. “Business Central helps us identify when we’re running low on an item in our warehouse so we can restock before we run out,” says Dawn. “Instead of customers waiting weeks, we can make sure they get their products right away. We now carry a true inventory where the system automatically works for us rather than us having to manually work the system to get a true inventory picture.” 

Business Central has also streamlined the coordination of product drop-shipments that go directly from vendors to customers. This is a key benefit since Streamline Aquatics actively partners with approximately 200 vendors and has access to nearly 1,000 vendors offering over 100,000 products. “When a company triples its sales in three years and needs to track this many vendors and customers, a scalable ERP platform with enterprise features like Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud is a must,” Dawn emphasizes. 

Along with the implementation of Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud, Streamline Aquatics opted to keep the partnership going by tapping into Western Computer’s Managed Support Services. In addition to locked-in and predictable support costs, Streamline Aquatics benefits from 

Dynamics 365 feature and roadmap advisory services, upgrade management with Microsoft’s bi-annual updates for Business Central, and break/fix incident support meeting SLA criteria. 

“We moved forward with Managed Support Services because it provides us with a safety blanket,” says Dawn. “Western Computer will assist us with future needs and software updates as we learn about Business Central and continue to grow. We also anticipate having Western Computer assist us with integrating Business Central with the Microsoft Office suite. This will allow our users to access ERP data while they work in Teams, Excel, and Word."

Chris and Dawn are confident that the partnership with Western Computer and the deployment of Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud has contributed to their legacy: “The new leadership team will appreciate what we set them up with, given the powerful capabilities they have for managing financials, inventory, and the warehouse,” says Chris. “Our internal teams are already impressed with how much easier it is to process sales orders and purchase orders compared to QuickBooks. Streamline Aquatics is now poised to go as far as the new leadership team wants to take it.”