Company Name: NewCold Automation

Location: Belgium, Europe

Industry: Manufacturing

Established: 2021

Company Size: <50

Odoo Users: <50

Hosting Type: Online

Apps: Sales, Purchase, Invoicing, Accounting, Logistics, Project, Timesheets, Employees, Studio, Time Off, Documents, Fleet, Expenses, Helpdesk

With headquarters in Belgium, NewCold Automation develops electrical and software engineering for automation projects. In order to efficiently manage its different operations, the company was looking for a management system that could provide time savings, efficiency and automation to keep growing the business, as so far the only tools were from the Microsoft Suite.

Part of the NewCold Group, NewCold Automation (NCA) is an engineering firm developing automation solutions to control Material Handling Equipment (MHE). The goal is to provide benefits to its customers, helping them to minimize operational downtime and maintenance and optimize the operators’ and staff’s use. With teams based in Belgium, Italy and the United States, the company works worldwide in a continuous ambition to innovate with its offer. 

Founded in 2021, the company started using Microsoft Tools such as Excel, Outlook and Teams to handle communication and tasks. Each project had a dedicated Excel file, with different people working on it, which was making it difficult to know what each person was doing. There were no clear guidelines or tasks attribution, and it was not optimal over time, as the company was growing. 

After a couple of years, the teams realized they were lacking a proper management system to operate and track the projects. It was indeed becoming more and more complex to keep working like that as the business was growing, with an increasing number of employees.

NewCold Automation started researching and comparing around five or six tools, such as Odoo, SAP, Oracle and Monday.com, looking for the following key advantages: 

 Time savings

 Efficiency 

 Processes automation and centralization

 Growth

 Budget control

The company chose to move forward with Odoo’s software as it offers a good price-quality ratio, allowing the staff to use many features in a single interface without spending tons of money. Also, as NewCold Automation had no system in place, they needed something that was quick to implement, set up and use.

The implementation process of Odoo’s software started in 2022, with a desire to keep the set up internally in order to test and analyze the different available modules. Indeed, the company chose to try every application in order to decide which ones were useful for their type of business. 

The team started configuring and using the software at the same time, so that the necessary adjustments could be made while playing around with the interface. The employees started with the Projects app, and quickly added the Accounting, Invoicing, Timesheets, Fleet and some other modules. 

NewCold Automation chose to go for the standard version of Odoo and to adapt it to the way they work, as it is easier to be constantly up to date with the new versions and features released.

Odoo has been a true game changer for NewCold Automation, bringing structure to operations in all areas, such as finance, administration and project management. The benefits of the solutions are huge, as the company was starting from scratch, having barely no tools configured yet to handle daily operations. 

The team noticed that work could be done 50% faster, as a lot of efficiency has been gained. It now has a clear overview of what is in the inventory, how much money is spent on each project, what exactly is invoiced, etc. Transparency and traceability are up to 100% thanks to the different Odoo modules implemented. 

“We can follow up on everything now, when in the past we had problems to do so. Today, we are perfectly aware of our cash flow, and we know when we need to pay, invoice or order something.” - Kevin Van Hove, Operational Support for NewCold Automation

Today, NewCold Automation appreciates how much easier it is to follow up with projects, invoicing and costs. The next steps for the company are to track and fine tune the project's budget in order to make proper benchmarking, but also to keep implementing features that make employees’ life easier. 

"Odoo helped us to keep up with our growth, as we truly needed to be more efficient with the increasing number of employees and projects. Without Odoo, we wouldn’t have been able to do the things we are doing now I think” - Kevin Van Hove, Operational Support for NewCold Automation

NewCold Automation handles three times more projects now compared to four years ago when the company was launched, with also three times more employees to manage those missions. And the goal is to keep growing at this great pace, with the help of Odoo’s suite of business apps.