Vision Direct Group Future-Proofs Operations through Digitalization

Vision Direct Group fulfilled orders for more than 600,000 customers in seven European territories during 2015. The group’s UK customers benefit from next day delivery of stocked products when they order via VisionDirect.co.uk. Customers in all territories receive support seven days a week from specially trained customer support agents based in York, UK and Amsterdam, NL.

Challenge

With strong growth in all markets and anticipated revenue of more than €50 million for 2015, Vision Direct Group found its existing sales order management, fulfilment, supply management and procurement processes posed a risk to future performance. The company selected the Mendix platform to re-build these processes in-house, as an enterprise suite of interconnected digital applications.

Solution

“Vision Direct Group’s future success required scalable, agile, and interconnected systems adaptable to changing product ranges, geographies, and other needs,” said Miklos Parrag, the company’s chief technology officer. “Building our own applications in the Mendix visual modeling environment enabled collaboration with senior management on current and possible future requirements, and also proved faster, more flexible, and more affordable than buying an ERP solution.”

The new software applications are Mendix Cloud-based and designed to scale and adapt quickly as the market evolves.

Results

Engaging a lean, agile team of developers and a project manager, Vision Direct Group delivered the entire application suite in just four months. The project included extensive integration with existing systems, such as NetSuite financials, supplier inventories and a courier management system. Given the complexity, Vision Direct Group estimates a traditional code-based development approach would have taken at least three times the effort and time.