Microsoft Dynamics
Customer Solution Case Study
German IT Leader Follows the Map to
Increased Revenue with New Analytical Tool
Overview
Country/Region: Germany
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Wortmann AG is one of Germany’s
foremost IT companies, manufacturing and
distributing computers and monitors
through more than 5,500 retailers. It has
240 employees and 170 desktops.
Business Situation
Wortmann had a wealth of regional sales
and marketing information in Microsoft
Business Solutions–Navision®. The
company needed a tool that would work
with Microsoft Navision to provide a visual
representation of the data, improving
managers’ understanding of regional sales.
Solution
Wortmann partnered with Bechtle to deploy
a Microsoft Office System solution that
provides a flexible, automatic process to
import data into Microsoft Office Excel
2003 and allows users to easily display
data in Microsoft MapPoint® Europe.
Benefits
 Reduced data extraction time
 100% increase in top customer contacts
50% reduction in sales visit cost
Saved €7500 in inventory costs
 Improved sales network management
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"Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision, Microsoft
Office 2003, and MapPoint together improve
Wortmann's ability to fine-tune and manage the
lifeblood of our business—our distributor network."
Robin Wittland, IT Strategies Manager and Board Member, Wortmann AG
Wortmann AG sells computer products and peripherals through a
network of retail outlets throughout Germany. The company
benefits from Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision (now part of
Microsoft Dynamics™) which helps them manage all regional sales
and marketing data, but it wanted to provide executives, sales and
product managers, and sales representatives with a visual
representation of this data to extend its value to the organization.
So Wortmann partnered with Bechtle to deploy a Microsoft Office
System solution that provides a flexible, automatic process for
users to extract data from Microsoft Navision and import it into a
Microsoft Office Excel 2003 workbook. The data then can be
quickly ported into Microsoft MapPoint, turning statistical data into
a visual tool to understand the business at a glance.
Situation
Since its inception in 1986, Wortmann AG
has relied on indirect distribution to improve
market penetration and provide localized,
responsive customer service. The company
sells Terra Computers and MAGiC Displays
(monitors) as well as a selection of brandname computer products and peripheral
devices at competitive market prices. Indirect
distribution through a network of retail outlets
allows Wortmann to react to local market
conditions and increase product turnover.
Wortmann's "Service to Order" concept and
20 service centers stocked with product
inventory and parts allow the company to
respond to customers on an individual basis
through customized service packages at low
cost: a key differentiator in a very competitive
industry.
Wortmann's business strategy has paid off
well. The latest revenue figures available
show the company increasing revenue in
2001 by 10 percent, with total sales that year
of nearly 240 million Euros.
Wortmann AG’s Business
Wortmann wanted to take advantage of the
regional sales and marketing data that the
company is collecting through its Microsoft®
Business Solutions–Navision® enterprise
resource planning system so it could improve
strategic decision-making to maximize
regional sales revenue and customer service,
and improve targeted product marketing.
Wortmann reasoned that the more
employees were able to analyze the business
region by region, the better the company
would be able to match its products and
services to local market conditions—further
supporting the business strategy that
differentiates Wortmann from its competitors.
Currently, employees rely on a cumbersome
postal code listing and pages of sales
statistics that they copy and paste from the
Microsoft Navision data warehouse to
evaluate the business at a regional level.
Trying to relate sales, product, and service
data to postal codes resulted in only a
cursory understanding of Wortmann's
presence in the field. As a result, staff usually
went through the process for monthly sales
meetings and for little else.
Alternatively, an employee could request that
one of the company's five system
administrators export specified data, reduce
the files, and then import them to a tool that
could display it in Microsoft MapPoint®
Europe business mapping software. This
process took between 5 and 10 hours, and IT
staffers were loath to take that much time
out of their busy schedules.
So Wortmann had a wealth of business
information, but no efficient way for the chief
information officer, executives, sales and
product managers, and sales representatives
in the field to take advantage of it—and that
was impeding the company's ability to run its
business.
"We needed a simple tool so employees could
easily extract data from Microsoft Navision,"
says Robin Wittland, IT Strategies Manager
and Board Member at Wortmann AG. "This is
information we wanted them to use every day
to support our objectives. For a company our
size, expensive business analytic solutions
are not an option. We began to think of ways
to automate the data extraction process that
would be cost effective, simple to deploy, and
easy to use."
Solution
Wortmann AG partnered with Bechtle
Softwareloesungen GmbH to deploy a
Microsoft Office System solution that exploits
the XML capabilities of Office Professional
Edition 2003. The solution provides a flexible,
automatic process for users to extract XML
data from Microsoft Navision and import it
directly into a Microsoft Office Excel 2003
workbook. The data then can be ported
directly into Microsoft MapPoint® for a visual
representation of information that turns
statistical data into a visual tool to
understand the business at a glance.
The team at Bechtle created a new dialog
function in Microsoft Navision called Create
Statistical Pool that allows users to define
which data should be exported to Excel (see
figure 2). Because of the size of the
database, data must be aggregated before it
can be exported. The dialog is a flexible
starting point for different statistical
evaluations because users can define the
XML schemas they require and use each
independently of the options in the dialog
box. To date, ten Excel worksheets and five
XML schemas have been defined; for
example sales data can be structured with or
without salespeople. With multiple XML
schemas and worksheets available,
Wortmann users have a variety of options for
collecting and analyzing the sales and
marketing data.
The Bechtle team also added user
authorization control to a dialog box with
three options available:
 Standard—salespeople can export only
their own data.
 Team —a sales team manager can export
sales data within his or her jurisdiction.
 Supervisor—a supervisor can export
anything.
This feature helps protect data security by
aligning permission rights with the roles of
the approximately 40 users who will take
advantage of the solution.
Benefits
Wortmann's Microsoft Office System solution
represents a paradigm shift in data access
and user productivity. "Using Navision and
Office 2003 together we have the best of
both worlds: a rich source of integrated sales
and marketing data and an easy-to-use tool
that allows employees to display that data in
MapPoint. Now we can quite literally "see"
what's happening in the field," says Wittland.
"Connecting the data with MapPoint will
provide us with unprecedented visibility into
our business."
Making the Most of Microsoft Navision
Making sales and marketing data readily
available in a visual format has several
positive implications for the Wortmann's.
Instead of going through a laborious and
unsatisfactory process once or twice a
month, users can get the data they need
when they need it. The end result is that they
will be using more current data, more often,
to make better decisions. Now Wortmann can
take full advantage of a combined Microsoft
Navision and Microsoft Office 2003 solution
to provide a window into its sales and
marketing data.
"I expect a quick and widespread user
adoption for this solution," says Wittland. "In
our company, users are quick to take
advantage of a new tool if it's easy to use.
That's the beauty of this solution; you can
take ‘simple' Office products and turn them
into powerful agents for positive change."
Mapping the Business
In Wortmann's case, that means not only
connecting users with the information they
need to work more productively, but also
providing options for data analysis that
weren't possible before. Linking statistical
data to a map enables staff to put their
information into a useful, geographic context.
This is especially beneficial for Wortmann's
extensive network of distributors.
"We can use the maps to show more than
one data relationship, providing a multilevel
view of the business in a specific area, which
was impossible before," explains Wittland.
"You can see what areas have high sales and
which have low sales, and layer on top of that
which resellers are in each area or which
sales representatives are responsible for that
area. This helps you to understand what
different factors might be causing the
patterns that you can see so easily on a map.
Using these maps, I expect our monthly sales
meetings will be much more productive."
Using the solution, sales managers will be
able to improve their understanding of sales
by geographical areas and improve their
evaluation of sales representatives'
performance in certain areas. Similarly,
product managers will be able to see
instantly where sales are high or low for
individual products. And for the first time,
employees can use a visual representation of
product sales over time.
"We have already used information from our
solution to optimize the routing of our sales
force in the field to increase visits to top
customers from 1.5 per day to 3," says
Wittland. "This means that we have increased
customer contacts per day by 100 percent. A
sales representative cost €60.000 a year,
and that person has 200 days in which to
visit customers, so we are reducing the cost
of a visit from €200 to €100, or by 50
percent."
With access to these snapshots of regional
up-to-date business data readily available,
Wortmann can build better marketing
campaigns targeted to particular problem
areas, improve the performance of the sales
representatives, improve customer service,
and respond proactively to any negative
trends. "Microsoft Navision, Microsoft Office
2003, and MapPoint together improve
Wortmann's ability to fine-tune and manage
the lifeblood of our business—our distributor
network," says Wittland.
An Extensible Solution
Wortmann's Microsoft Office System solution
is easily extended to other areas of the
business, providing the company with
different opportunities to enjoy the same
benefits. For example, MapPoint can be used
for any area of the company's global
operations, and a similar process can be
deployed for product managers to extract
service data from Microsoft Navision. This
would enable the company to improve the
provision of service contracts in local areas.
Right now, there is no way for the product
manager who is responsible for inventory
management at regional service centers to
ensure that there will be the right amount of
parts available to fulfill service contracts
pertaining to the different products sold in
that area. Using the Office System solution,
the product manager might see that more
high-end servers were sold in a certain area
than were anticipated, and can take
immediate steps to ensure that the right
amount of parts is available if needed. In this
way, the company has been able to allocate
the appropriate level of inventory to each
region, saving €7500.
Wortmann is also using the solution to reduce
the cost of handling repaired parts at its
service center. The new tool revealed a high
level of repairs required for certain parts, so
the company made an agreement with the
producers whereby they make Wortmann a
credit note for returned parts and Wortmann
simply sends the customer a new one. "This
saves us €15 every time we received a
repaired part back from the producer that we
had to handle in our service center, and
customers are getting a new part more
quickly."
"Office 2003 allows us to take proactive
steps to improve customer service, inventory
management, product revenue, sales force
performance, and marketing initiatives," says
Wittland. "It's the beginning of a whole new
way of managing our business."
For More Information
Microsoft Dynamics
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated,
adaptable business management solutions
that enables you and your people to make
business decisions with greater confidence.
Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar
Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office,
which means less of a learning curve for your
people, so they can get up and running
quickly and focus on what’s most important.
And because it is from Microsoft, it easily
works with the systems that your company
already has implemented. By automating and
streamlining financial, customer relationship,
and supply chain processes, Microsoft
Dynamics brings together people, processes,
and technologies, increasing the productivity
and effectiveness of your business, and
helping you drive business success.
For more information about Bechtle
Softwareloesungen GmbH products and
services, call +49 (0)7721/88598-0 or
visit the Web site at:
www.bechtle.com
For more information about Wortmann AG
products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.wortmann.de
For more information about Microsoft
Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
Software and Services
Hardware
Products
 TERRA AQUA DELECTUS Server with 4 Intel
− Microsoft MapPoint 2002 Europe
XEON Processors, 8 GB Ram and 90 GB
− Microsoft Office 2003 Professional
hard drive
 Microsoft Dynamics
 TERRA ORBIS PC System with Intel
− Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision
Pentium 4 Processors, min. 256 MB Ram

© 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, MapPoint, Microsoft Dynamics, Navision, the Office
logo, Windows and the Windows logo are either registered
trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the
United States and/or other countries. The names of actual
companies and products mentioned herein may be the
trademarks of their respective owners.
Document published October, 2003
Partners

Bechtle Softwareloesungen GmbH