SmartConnect helped Aqualogic Overcome Integration Challenges

Founded in 1968, Aqualogic designs, supplies, installs and services commercial and industrial laundry products from around the world, providing laundry solutions across industries Australia-wide.

Aqualogic’s products range from small guest washer and dryer to high volume laundry equipment with a focus on provisioning turnkey laundry solutions. Aqualogic is a family run business who pride themselves on ensuring they always provide their customers the ideal solution and back it up with a service team unrivaled in size and expertise.

Problems & Challenges

Aqualogic used the Microsoft GP Connector for integrations to CRM, but when Dynamics CRM was upgraded to Dynamics 365 the connector failed.

The import of data using the Dynamics Connector was only configured to the default settings, (i.e. price lists didn’t match the GP data, customer master wasn’t filtered to the correct address code, all inventory items were imported (more than 10,000), rather than the less than 800 items that were actually required in CRM. The equipment, such as washing machines, dryers, etc., from Key2Act tables were required and the Dynamics Connector couldn’t handle this custom request. The equipment needed to be linked to a customer.

The Dynamics Connector reported errors to a table in the Dynamics database and caused the database to grow five times larger than normal before it was discovered.

With all the issues they faced with the connector, Aqualogic knew they needed a reliable integration tool that would take them into the future and one that could import the needed equipment information to custom CRM entities.

Mick Egan, ERP Practice Lead at Nexon Asia Pacific, recommended SmartConnect by eOne Solutions to replace the Microsoft Dynamics Connector.

Egan commented, “Based on previous experience, SmartConnect was an ideal solution for the problem at hand. I knew that the eOne solution could solve the need to integrate to Dynamics 365, could write to the custom entities that Aqualogic needed to be updated, and progress with the customer as their needs evolved, as well.”

Over a 6-month period, Egan began to replace and create all the integrations Aqualogic needed to successfully integrate Microsoft Dynamics GP with Microsoft Dynamics 365. He began by creating integrations to import customer master records and filter to specific address codes. Next, he built an integration, consisting of 3 data maps, to import equipment records from Key2Act tables to customer accounts with their own equipment entity. The maps insert, update and delete as machines are added, updated or removed from the accounts. Egan set up the integrations on a schedule which has improved the efficiency of data automatically populating on a regular basis.

Integrations were created from Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365: importing product data, stock count entries (with automatic calculations for variances), service fee updates (which updates the customer location with a service fee to a user defined field, that is then used to automatically populate the service invoice when the service call is complete) and created last service call dates (a custom map to update the customer account with the date of the last service call, so account managers know the last time a technician attended the site).

“On all the integrations, I have added email success and failure monitoring so we can easily identify any errors that may occur and resolve them quickly,” commented Egan.

Continuing, he shared the effects of SmartConnect on Aqualogic’s integration process, “They now have a more efficient workforce, as information is readily at hand when talking with customers and looking for new opportunities. The age of machines at a particular customer can be easily determined from CRM, and this is thanks to equipment data being imported into the customer CRM entity.”

Egan concluded, “SmartConnect, even when first released years ago, quickly became a solution we could use for integrations that were previously undertaken with lots of coding or using SSIS. SmartConnect has opened a new market for consultants to build complex integrations through the front-end and provided customers with a more reasonable return on investment on the solutions they select.”

Based on previous experience, SmartConnect was an ideal solution for the problem at hand. I knew that the eOne solution could solve the need to integrate to Dynamics 365, could write to the custom entities that Aqualogic needed to be updated, and progress with the customer as their needs evolved, as well.

Mick Egan, ERP Practice Lead at Nexon Asia Pacific