Auto-Chlor Automates Unique Business Requirements with SmartConnect

Auto-Chlor is dedicated to providing product, equipment and service for ware-washing, laundry, housekeeping, and floor care markets. With large volume customers in the Southeastern and Central United States, Auto-Chlor needed a single, customized integrated system to track their machines as both sales inventory and as an asset for servicing.

Auto-Chlor approached eOne for a solution to import asset information into Dynamics GP from a third-party system. The scope of the project evolved to include Extender Enterprise and numerous SmartConnect integrations and automations which led to this response from Auto-Chlor IT Manager Troy Kent: “The two products marry and work together well…they are necessary together…if you have any kind of desire to do anything to GP that enhances its capabilities.”

Problems & Challenges

Auto-Chlor had been using a legacy AS 400 solution to handle sales, invoicing, and payroll commissions, while using Microsoft Dynamics GP to track accounts receivable and financials. The legacy system had become highly customized over 15 years, leaving Auto-Chlor reliant on the support of their legacy supplier.

Auto-Chlor needed a way to marry the data from the two systems and track all the information for both commodities and assets. Auto-Chlor also needed to regain control over their internal business systems. To do that they needed to customize Dynamics GP in house, “Our goal was to make everything run on GP including all the customizations…we wanted to make sure any custom work would function through upgrades, patches, and software release and further to that” explained Kent. To meet these needs Extender Enterprise was introduced into the project.

Auto-Chlor tracks very specific information about washing machines and so created a machine maintenance form in GP that included all the critical data that the legacy system currently track about the machine. Kent explained “this was not just data capture. We used the logic layer of Extender to do calculations and break the analysis down to a line item level.”

Kent goes on to explain where SmartConnect was first used, “With SmartConnect, we are able to receive flat file data coming from field, make updates to orders and inventory and at the same time update invoices and machine details tied to assets in Dynamics GP.” Auto-Chlor is able to use one set of data to make multiple updates into the GP system.

Auto-Chlor soon found that not only could SmartConnect import all the information they had stored in their legacy system, but could automate processes within GP to display information to all the right users at the right time and in the right module. Using SmartConnect together with Extender Enterprise, Auto-Chlor was able to create the uninterrupted work flow they had wanted for their users.

“The team at eOne was fantastic and kept coming up with better ideas and efficiencies each time we spoke. We used eOne for some of the logic layer configurations, and the beauty of this is that the changes are accessible to us so we can update it or use any VAR we choose. We are not locked in.” Kent explained.

Troy Kent, IT Manager at Auto-Chlor, shared his satisfaction: “previously the keys to our system were in someone else’s hands. SmartConnect and Extender Enterprise put the keys back in our own hands, to the benefit of our own company. It’s a trickle-down effect as you start to see possibilities that you hadn’t seen before…we now have 7 more mini projects planned with SmartConnect and Extender.”

The team at eOne was fantastic and kept coming up with better ideas and efficiencies each time we spoke.

Troy Kent, IT Manager at Auto-Chlor