The Challenge
The Warco Group had successfully scaled its manufacturing operations to cover 16 European countries, but their technological backbone was failing to keep up. For years, the company relied on a custom-made ERP built on legacy low-code technology. While the system had worked for a smaller local team, it had become frustratingly slow and unstable at a continental scale. As the company expanded, the software remained rigid, turning their international network into a collection of isolated data silos.
This fragmentation created a daily operational struggle for staff across the region. Because the system treated each country as a separate island, simple collaboration was nearly impossible. If a customer sent an inquiry to the French branch that required technical input from an engineer in Germany, there was no way to transfer the case within the system. Staff were forced into manual workarounds, losing track of emails and struggling to provide consistent responses across different languages.
Beyond the communication issues, the rigid architecture could not support the group's complex corporate structure:
- Financial Friction: As a group composed of multiple legal entities, internal trade was a logistical nightmare. Moving stock between branches required manual invoicing and internal settlements that the old system could not automate.
- Inconsistent Data: Without a centralized Product Information Management (PIM) system, keeping catalogs and pricing updated across 12 markets was error-prone and inefficient.
- System Latency: The legacy code simply couldn't handle the data volume, leading to slow load times that hampered productivity for hundreds of employees every day.
The Solution
To break down these digital borders, we engineered a completely unified enterprise platform using Siemens Mendix. By leveraging AI-augmented engineering, we were able to rapidly decode and rebuild the complex business logic from the legacy system, migrating the entire group to a modern, high-performance architecture in a fraction of the time required for a traditional rewrite.
The new system acts as a "Single Source of Truth" for the entire continent. We replaced the isolated databases with a centralized Inquiry Command Center that manages communication for all 12 countries. Now, when a customer contact comes in, it enters a global queue where it can be seamlessly transferred between employees and legal entities without losing context. To bridge the language gap, we implemented smart response templates, allowing staff to generate professional, localized replies with a single click.
Crucially, the platform automates the heavy lifting of multi-entity operations:
- Automated Inter-Company Settlements: The system now understands the Warco Group’s legal structure. When goods move between entities (e.g., from Germany to France), the ERP automatically generates the correct internal invoices and handles the settlements, integrating directly with DATEV for seamless accounting.
- Unified Product Data: A centralized Product Information Management (PIM) module ensures that a single update to a product's specs or pricing instantly propagates to all invoices, quotes, and e-commerce channels across Europe.
- Scalable Performance: The modern architecture eliminates the latency of the old system, providing instant data access for users regardless of their location.
Technology Stack
- Strategy: AI-Augmented Engineering
- Core Platform: Siemens Mendix (Enterprise Low-Code)
- Infrastructure: AWS (Amazon Web Services)
- Financial Integration: DATEV, Automated Multi-Entity Settlements
- Commerce & Data: Custom PIM, REST APIs for Marketplaces
- Service Module: Custom Case Management & Ticketing
- Database: PostgreSQL