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Drake & Farrell actively revolutionizes the way society deals with used electronical equipment, with a strong mission to eliminate it. Founded in 2006 and with facilities in Bleiswijk, The Netherlands and Jindřichův Hradec, Czech Republic, Drake & Farrell aims to reuse almost 100% electronic products including components and materials. They ensure materials are recycled and made reusable, whereas components are repaired or refurbished to create a circular supply chain. They offer customized services that include specific reverse logistics, including organizing returns and functional screening, testing, repair and refurbishing, root cause analysis, re-kitting and (spare)parts sourcing - helping unlock the business opportunities of the circular supply chain for its clients. Providing impactful ecological and economic results in various industries such as telco, consumer electronics, healthcare and eMobility, Drake & Farrell supports its customers to transition from a linear to a circular compliant business model.
In their initiative to connect their systems and clients better, Drake & Farrell sought an integration solution that could simplify how they connected their Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O) ERP with e-commerce apps. As a result, they discovered the Alumio API Plugin on Microsoft AppSource, the official Microsoft app store, which helps significantly simplify Dynamics 365 F&O integrations.
The Alumio API Plugin for Microsoft Dynamics 365F&O is a product that’s delivered via the Alumio integration platform (iPaaS) and in collaboration with Fresh Dynamics, leading Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O ERP implementation experts. The API Plugin is a unique solution that directly installs key B2B & B2CP API points within the ERP to simplify and speed up integrations with e-commerce apps and SaaS solutions. This helps cut down Dynamics 365 F&O integration time in half.
Drake & Farrell was motivated to choose Alumio as their middleware solution, since this Alumio API Plugin for Dynamics 365 F&O was a Microsoft-certified integration product on the official app store.
"Our API plugin intelligently leverages the business logic of Dynamics 365. As a Microsoft-validated plugin it stays updated with the latest versions of the application. It helped Drake & Farrell build a significantly faster, real-time integration via the Alumio integration platform for creating orders, retrieving stock info from customer webshops, and helping them create puchase orders directly in Dynamics 365 via the plugin. We’re still supporting them with tweaks, improvements, and customizations” - Gert Geurtsen, founder and co-owner at Fresh Dynamics
Before using Alumio, Drake & Farrell had already dabbled in building several integrations. This involved using Microsoft Azure Integration Services, building makeshift connections via FTP, creating a Shopify integration, and even one with Dynamics 365 F&O and Microsoft Power Apps. However, the primary system they wanted to integrate with all their other apps was Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O ERP. Thus, apart from using the Alumio API plugin to help enhance Dynamics 365 F&O’s integration capabilities, Drake & Farrell benefited from using the Alumio cloud-native integration platform to unify all their integrations and data flows.
Since Drake & Farrell uses Dynamics 365 F&O for all their logistical operations, they planned to use Alumio to build synchronous connections between the ERP and the web shops of their customers that were built on Shopify, Adobe Commerce (Magento), and WooCommerce. They also received and processed orders in their Dynamics 365 F&O system via an FTP server in XML or CSV format, which they also planned to integrate via Alumio. Apart from working with Fresh Dynamics to to successfully install the API plugin in the Dynamics 365 F&O via Alumio, Drake & Farrell also worked with another Alumio partner and integration specialists called Inteqrate. As Alumio experts, Inteqrate helped them effectively configure and optimize all their application integrations via Alumio.
“We were surprised by the speed of integration with Alumio. We signed a contract, received an Alumio production environment with training sessions on how the platform worked. Soon after, we had the integrations delivered. We started testing the integrations and had it all live within just 3 months, which is quite fast given the complexity of integrations involved”. - Drake & Farrell
On a more technical level, Drake & Farrell sought an integration solution that offered speed and freed them from the hassles of custom code. As an API-based, low-code integration platform, Alumio was ideal for them to build fast, real-time connections between customer webshops and back-end systems, ordering systems, and the ERP system. The platform also enabled automated monitoring, logging, and real-time error detection, reducing inconsistencies and roadblocks.
Using Alumio as its central integration platform, Drake & Farrell automated and sped up many crucial Tasks between connected systems, such as creating purchase orders, querying sales order status, updating inventory levels, and reporting what they shipped to customers. They handled all this and more through the user-friendly web interface of Alumio in real-time or semi-real-time.
The speed at which Alumio helped them create orders increased customer satisfaction. To tackle additional challenges, such as translations, mapping complex data fields, and additional data requirements, Inteqrate helped them effectively leverage Alumio features. At the same time, they continue to receive help from Fresh Dynamics, who are still helping them build modifications and tweaks to customize the capabilities of the Dynamics 365 F&O API Plugin.
In their quest to be digital leaders in logistics/sustainability through modern API-centric integration capabilities, Drake & Farell aims to use Alumio to integrate more applications and customer web shops, making their processes even more efficient and transparent to customers.
