Coffee Fresh replaces legacy software with the Thinkwise low-code

Coffee Fresh is a traditional Dutch company with a history going back almost 100 years. The company has since grown into an organization, operating at a national level, with 150 employees, a head office in Drempt and five showrooms. It currently facilitates 100 million cups of coffee per year.

Coffee Fresh had been using the Finas business software from Euromation for several decades, the further development of which had ceased quite some time ago. Coffee Fresh decided to modernize the existing software by itself in phases using the Thinkwise model-driven low-code platform. The service module of the package was replaced 18 months ago and the rest of the software package has since been completely modernized and put into operation.

Software became a business risk

The software package formerly used by Coffee Fresh dates from the 1980s and its technological development had almost come to a standstill over the years. However, from a functional point of view, Coffee Fresh was very satisfied with the solution, mainly because it had been heavily customized over time.

According to Hugo Nienhuis, project leader at Coffee Fresh, “The outdated solution was becoming a business risk. As an organization, we could no longer progress from a technological point of view. For example, modern mobile technology was not supported. This is the reason why we started to look for an alternative.”

Coffee Fresh wanted to find a platform that could support all its business operations. As a first step, they decided to replace the relationship management module with Microsoft Dynamics. They soon realized that completely replacing Finas with standard software packages would be a major undertaking.

Hugo Nienhuis: “Based on the experience we gained from this, we decided that a standard off the shelf solution was not an option for us. Over the years we had developed a large amount of customized functionality to support our specific business processes. It was impossible to achieve the same support with a standard package. Or we would have to sacrifice a lot of functionality and implement new process flows. What we wanted was a modern and future-proof version of our old solution. After extensive market research, we discovered that Thinkwise was the only party that offered the possibility to modernize the existing software while maintaining its functionality. That is why we chose to work with Thinkwise.”

From demo to live

Thinkwise first developed a demo project for Coffee Fresh, which provided them with sufficient confidence to enter into a collaborative project. The company subsequently asked Thinkwise to modernize a software module. They started with the application used by the company’s service engineers, as this was relatively easy to disconnect from the other functionality. Coffee Fresh then gradually took over the further development of the rest of the software.

Hugo Nienhuis: “We went live with the entirely updated software platform last October. We have been able to retain 99.99% of the existing functionality. We also discovered that we can do some things better and more efficiently in the Thinkwise Platform.”

From coffee to software

Now that the modernized business software is fully in operation, Coffee Fresh wants to offer their software to other companies that use Finas. The company can do this because it purchased the original software vendor in 2012.

“The software company was continuing to shrink and when the owner retired, we purchased the company, among other things to ensure the continuity of the software. Our first and main goal was to modernize our version of the software for Coffee Fresh. Following this, we want to offer this new software to the existing Euromation customers. We are now at the start of this phase. In fact, we are setting up an entirely new business activity alongside our existing business.”

Victor Klaren, CVO of Thinkwise, is incredibly impressed with what Coffee Fresh has achieved: “With our low-code platform, Coffee Fresh has not only modernized its own legacy, but they will also be offering the new enterprise application as a product to other companies. This is a great example of digital transformation and it shows the unprecedented potential of the Thinkwise low-code platform.”

About Coffee Fresh

The best cup of coffee in the workplace: that’s what Coffee Fresh guarantees. Coffee systems, ingredients and fast technical services, these are our focal points. We take the time to give personal advice and with passion we provide a ‘tailored’ coffee solutions for every business. More than 100 million cups of Coffee Fresh are consumed every year. 150 people in total working at 5 locations: Located in the east of the Netherlands is Coffee Fresh Westhoff which started as a family business in the Achterhoek, the same goes for Coffee Fresh Veda in Twente. The latest addition is the showroom in the center of the Netherlands, Coffee Fresh Holland. Together with our partner locations in the South-West and South of the Netherlands, these 5 locations constitute the driving force of our organization. More information: www.coffeefresh.nl