Wahoo Fitness Leverages Odoo for Future Growth

About

Chip Hawkins founded Wahoo Fitness in 2009 with a vision to capture bicycle ride metrics (including GPS and power data) and share them quickly and easily with other software systems, using the iPhone instead of dedicated devices.

Following this vision, Chip built a company focused on connecting smartphones to fitness activities. The Wahoo Fitness platform seamlessly integrates wearable sensors, advanced-training hardware and mobile apps with iPhone and Android accessories to help every day and world-class athletes alike reach their fitness goals. Their products are sold globally, and can be found at the Apple Store, Amazon.com, or the Wahoo Fitness website.

Wahoo Fitness has experienced explosive growth due to their superior products that resonate with athletes around the world.

Situation

Wahoo Fitness had various disparate systems running their business, including Magento, QuickBooks, and manual data entry and tracking.

They received hundreds of online orders each day from multiple countries across the world, and used 3rd party warehouses for distribution.

With their explosive growth, the disconnected and manual systems started to fail. Inventory visibility in these remote warehouses was poor, and it was hard to know when to place procurement orders for new products. Wahoo needed a solution for better product management that increased visibility for the entire team.

Because Wahoo sold products in a number of countries, the accounting and sales staff needed to convert between multiple currencies.

Additionally, there were manual steps in moving orders from their e-commerce site to their fulfillment and accounting systems, resulting in inefficient double entry, and potential errors.

Lastly, Wahoo wanted a platform that they could use for multiple sales channels, such as using EDI to sell their products to traditional brick-and-mortar chains, as well as through leading e-commerce sites.

Approach

Wahoo engaged Open Source Integrators (OSI) to help build their complete ERP system. The team used OSI’s approach to Odoo implementation.

STEP 1: Analyze Wahoo’s Business Systems

During this step, Wahoo and OSI conducted a 1-week workshop to analyze the requirements and needs for a complete system; simultaneously, OSI conducted technology transfer to Wahoo staff. Collaborating together, the Wahoo/OSI team identified the criteria for success, determined realistic schedule and budget, and began prototyping a new system.

STEP 2: Optimize Critical Areas and Processes

Once the Workshop is complete, Wahoo and OSI worked to optimize critical areas. The team built and agreed upon a functional specification that addressed the key business processes.

The business goals included:

• Integrated inventory management to accounting, procurement, and fulfillment
  
• Integrated the 3rd party warehouses to accounting.
  
• Gain accurate inventory valuation
  
• Integrated e-commerce with the ERP
  
• Improve on operational efficiency
  

Gain a comprehensive, single-true view of information for analysis and decision-making

STEP 3: Build Odoo Systems to Automate Processes

Once the system was designed and the project is outlined, OSI commenced with Wahoo to build the complete system. Because Odoo is a very powerful and complete system, customization requirements were moderate.

Wahoo Fitness had an experienced developer with the right skill set, enthusiasm to dedicate to the project. Management was supportive of the change, and included the CEO/founder of the company and the functional lead from key areas including accounting, IT, warehouse management, and sales. The team was willing to adjust business functions to closely match out-of-the-box Odoo functionality, thus reducing the amount of required customizations. Project stakeholders had a realistic understanding of timing for system roll-out.

Key areas for customization included Magento integration, 3rd party warehouse integration, adjustments to multi country/multi-currency accounting, sales tracking, and reporting.

STEP 4: Provide Transition Assistance

Team members completed their work on time, and had a good understanding of tasks and timeframe. Areas of risk were addressed at the beginning of the project, allowing time for plan adjustments or deeper investigation where necessary. System users were involved in testing early on, allowing for system adjustments before formal UAT.

Once system automation was set up, OSI provided coaching, training, and warranty support to help Wahoo transition to independence.

OSI team members were onsite during the “Go-Live” week, to answer any questions and ensure that Wahoo was supported.

There was some scope increase during the project, but the budget and schedule impact was low due to other work items being complete ahead of schedule.

Results

Wahoo Fitness is successfully using Odoo for

• Accounting
  
• Sales
  
• CRM
  
• Warehouse management
  
• E-commerce, via Magento
  

Wahoo went live on their originally scheduled Go Live date, and enjoying the benefits of a complete business platform, including:

• 3rd party warehouse costs were reduced as a result of automated information transfer (Warehouse staff no longer needed to do costly manual data entry).
  
• Sales staff no longer needed to manually transfer orders from the e-commerce site, freeing them up for more proactive, leads management activities.
  
• Wahoo’s capacity for receiving and processing orders increased dramatically, setting them up for accelerated future growth.
  

Summary

Wahoo’s success can be attributed to the vision and leadership of Chip Hawkins, in addition to the innovative, enthusiastic implementation team at Wahoo.

Additionally, scope, schedule and budget were carefully managed, resulting in a successful implementation, on-time, on-budget, and with desired results. Since completing the initial ERP roll-out (Phase 1), Wahoo Fitness has embarked on a second project (Phase II) to use EDI to integrate with several 3rd party retailers and add additional reports and dashboards.

Wahoo Fitness is a leader in their market, due to innovative and cutting-edge technology. Wahoo’s approach to implementing an ERP was based on this same philosophy, selecting the Odoo platform and using OSI’s implementation solution. By leveraging this approach, Wahoo was able to implement an effective ERP system in 10 months, from first engagement to final “Go-Live”.

Wahoo will continue as the leader in their market by leveraging a newly acquired competitive advantage—technology that enables their business and catapults them into the next level.