ASSOS of Switzerland GmbH excels through ERP migration and omnichannel expansion with Celigo

About

ASSOS of Switzerland GmbH (from now on ASSOS) is an iconic brand for professional cycling apparel and accessories, outfitting men and women since 1976 with products celebrated for their technical excellence and premium quality. No stranger to innovation, ASSOS developed the world’s first aerodynamic carbon fiber bicycle frame and later introduced Lycra and skinsuits, commonly worn in downhill skiing at the time, to the cycling world.

Background

Celebrated for the technical excellence of its products, ASSOS’s team recognized the need to develop an equally excellent modern application infrastructure. The goal was to create an ecosystem characterized by best-of-breed solutions, requiring minimal or zero custom software development for anything from its ERP, CRM, and WMS to customer-facing channels and BI tools.

This transition aimed to enhance flexibility, support global growth, and streamline operations across retail stores, B2C ecommerce, B2B wholesale, and international supply chains.

In 2017, ASSOS began this strategic transformation by initiating the migration of their flagship store’s ERP system from an on-premise version of SAP Business One to a modern cloud-based ERP platform.

Alessio Marzorati, ERP Project Manager at People Plus working as an external consultant at ASSOS, explained, “Our SAP Business One instance was limited in its ability to support global and multichannel use cases. We needed to move to the cloud to have the flexibility and availability required to support our growth.”

Challenge

ASSOS faced the challenge of migrating to a modern cloud-based ERP platform while maintaining business continuity and ensuring a seamless customer experience. This involved integrating legacy and new systems and duplicating data to ensure a smooth transition. Additionally, the company sought to support an omnichannel model, aligning inventory and sales data across multiple touchpoints, including high street stores, a proprietary ecommerce website, a B2B wholesale portal, and a network of global resellers and 3PLs. As a lean IT organization, ASSOS required a robust low-code solution that could facilitate quick adaptations and complex automation without heavy reliance on specialist support.

Solution: Celigo as the orchestrator

ASSOS selected Celigo’s iPaaS as their central hub for integration, data transformation, and process automation. Celigo’s intuitive interface, prebuilt connectors, and low-code capabilities allowed ASSOS to quickly establish critical data flows while providing the flexibility to transform and load data from various sources and formats.

“Celigo played a crucial role in our phased migration,” Alessio emphasized. “We utilized their iPaaS to seamlessly transfer orders from our ASSOS ecommerce platform to our new cloud-based ERP and maintain data alignment across both systems. Celigo’s proactive alerts were invaluable, promptly notifying us of any errors in the data structure or issues like date misalignment and references to unavailable inventory.”

Now, data from various systems such as ERPs, ecommerce platforms, POS systems, and 3PL providers flows into Celigo. The iPaaS then transforms the data to fit the specific needs of each system, such as adapting categories between the ERP and CMS. It also triggers actions like creating orders or sales leads in the relevant system or reconciling inventory levels on third-party websites.

Luca Carachino, eCommerce Technical Lead at ASSOS, highlighted the versatility of Celigo: “To be honest, my previous experience trying to create automated workflows on similar systems to Celigo, even if the flow is for something really simple, required a lot of time. It’s very helpful to have Celigo because it’s so simple that we can create or adapt an automated workflow in an hour and then test and run it. This took days or weeks to develop with other systems I’ve worked with.”

ASSOS initially used both Boomi iPaaS and Celigo iPaaS in different parts of the business. However, the ease of use and flexibility of Celigo led them to start phasing out Boomi. Alessio stated, “We’ve seen, for example, when using Celigo in parallel with Boomi for cross-docking, it is simpler in Celigo. So the idea now with our new 3PL partner is to do it all with Celigo by the end of the year.”

Bottom line

By leveraging Celigo as its central integration hub, ASSOS achieved significant benefits during its ERP migration and omnichannel expansion:

• Maintained Business Stability: Ensured seamless operations and customer experience during the phased ERP migration.
• Efficiency Gains: Saved the equivalent of three full-time employees (FTEs) in manual data maintenance.
• Reduced Error Risk: Centralized error management and proactive notifications reduced risks and accelerated issue resolution.
• Agility: Enabled rapid expansion to new channels and 3PL providers, reducing setup time from months to weeks.
• Streamlined IT Operations: Consolidated their integration strategy to Celigo’s iPaaS, phasing out Boomi iPaaS, reducing costs, and gaining control over integrations.

Alessio summarized the impact of Celigo: “Celigo allows our small team to support the business effectively. We’re empowered to take on new initiatives and touchpoints to fuel growth. For rapidly growing companies, Celigo provides an automation platform that scales.”

ASSOS continues to enrich its ecosystem with best-in-breed products and certified procedures, maintaining its commitment to leveraging top-tier solutions in each application area.

With Celigo as their key strategic iPaaS for integration, data transformation, and process automation, ASSOS is well-equipped to innovate and scale its omnichannel presence. They can deliver the premium customer experience that their customers have come to love while gaining increased visibility into their business and the ability to quickly adapt to new market opportunities.