“We want to track products”: Introducing autoscan and Business Central at Der Aumair

The company Der Aumair has introduced autoscan in conjunction with Business Central. Klaus Aumair and Michaela Haunschmid talked to us about how it went and why product tracking is important to them.

Question: Before we start talking about your experiences with autoscan: What does the company Der Aumair actually do?

Klaus Aumair (CEO): We offer full service around automatic vending machines. At the touch of a button, these machines offer e. g. coffee, drinks or snacks. We set them up for our customers and service, maintain and repair them. When required, we also fill them. But our customers can also do it on their own, like in the case of butchers or farmers selling their own products via these machines.

Question: How long have you been in business?

Klaus Aumair: I founded the company in 2014. Currently we are a team of 10.

“We have one special requirement: We want to track products.”

Question: Let’s talk autoscan: Why did you introduce a scanner solution?

Michaela Haunschmid (Office Management): It actually started with us looking for an ERP system – until recently, we did not have one.

Klaus Aumair: Exactly. In the end, we chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
But we have one special requirement: We want to track products. Sometimes, suppliers have to recall products. In such cases, we need to know where the product can be found, i. e. in which machine at which customer location, so that we can quickly inform the customer and withdraw the product.
Our Business Central partner, COUNT IT, thought that this could be a job for autoscan.

Question: How does autoscan help you with tracking products?

Klaus Aumair: This is how it works: Our employees load their cars with all the products they need in the morning. We treat the cars as warehouses. Our people scan the products with autoscan and relocate them to their cars. We record this and know which products are in which car going to their destination. After arriving at a customer, we place the goods in the machines and record the respective products via the machine’s system which reports this data back to our ERP system.

Question: How did the introduction of autoscan go?

Michael Haunschmid: We combined the introduction with our very first inventory. Members of your team were on-site and helped us.

“We learned a lot about Business Central thanks to your help that day when introducing autoscan!”

Question: You actually organized your warehouse for the first time, didn’t you?

Michaela Haunschmid: That’s true, we had just started using the ERP system and were in the middle of organizing and adjusting everything. We activated the “inventory” functionality in the system for the physical inventory.
What was really great was that we learned a lot about Business Central thanks to your help that day when introducing autoscan! We got to know a lot about the structure, the setup, the right approach. What do we need for creating an article? What is a “warehouse location”, what is a “bin”?

Question: How has it been going since introducing autoscan?

Klaus Aumair: It’s going well now but, in the beginning, autoscan was met with relatively little acceptance.

Michaela Haunschmid: That’s true! The main reason was that we never had an ERP system before. That means that our team wasn’t familiar with the long trail of paperwork that other companies already had to grapple with. So they had no idea how much easier it would be with a scanner solution!

Klaus Aumair: Luckily, we have an employee who used to work for a bigger company and has that kind of experience.

Michaela Haunschmid: Yes, he was a driving force for the project and motivated the others!

Question: At the end of last year, you did the first physical inventory without help. How did that go?

Michaela Haunschmid: Everything we did with autoscan went very well!