Two years after going live on a new ERP, John Hart had a system that held its data but no longer moved the business forward. Six months after choosing WMSSoft, all nine companies and four very different divisions were running on a single Odoo platform. More than a year on, that platform is still being extended, one scoped improvement at a time.
At a glance
The challenge
John Hart implemented a new ERP in 2022. It ran, but within two years it had become a ceiling rather than a launchpad. The system recorded transactions, but it didn’t help the divisions quote faster, plan better or see what was really happening across the group.
The complexity was real. Nine companies. An Australian entity split across four divisions with almost nothing in common operationally. Trading in multiple currencies. Each division needed something different from its system:
- Machine Sales quotes high-value capital equipment from complex buy and sell pricelists, where a single quote can be worth a great deal.
- Spare Parts lives or dies on availability and the speed of procurement.
- Service sends technicians to customer sites and needs every job, hour and machine failure on record.
- Automation builds robotic systems as projects, where costs, budgets and work in progress have to be tracked build by build.
Finance then had to pull all of that together into one consolidated, multi-currency view for the group. Replacing an ERP only two years old is a big call. The leadership team made it because staying put was costing more than moving.
Why Odoo and WMSSoft
John Hart didn’t need another system that stored records. It needed one platform flexible enough to give four divisions four different ways of working, while still rolling up into a single set of group financials.
Odoo’s multi-company and analytic accounting made that possible without running separate systems per division. WMSSoft’s approach made it practical: rather than imposing one standard process, we worked division by division with each general manager. We mapped their actual problems to Odoo capabilities, and customised only where the standard product genuinely couldn’t fit.
How we delivered it
- Discovery by division. Separate workshops with each division’s general manager and the finance team, documenting how work really flows, not how the old system forced it to.
- Design and build. Standard Odoo first, then targeted customisations scoped in writing, with a statement of work for each change.
- Data migration. Customers, suppliers, products, open transactions and balances moved across from the previous ERP and reconciled for all nine companies.
- User acceptance testing. Each division tested its own processes end to end before sign-off.
- Go-live and hypercare. All divisions live within six months, followed by close support while users settled in.
The solution, division by division
Machine Sales: faster, more accurate quoting
We digitised the complex buy and sell pricelists that drive capital machine sales, and put CRM and Sales to work on top of them. Quotes that used to be slow and manual now come together quickly, priced correctly and tracked through the pipeline.
Spare Parts: stock visibility and faster procurement
Odoo Inventory gave the parts business a real-time view of stock across locations. Replenishment and purchasing moved into the system, so procurement became faster and far less manual.
Service: the full job lifecycle
Field Service, Timesheets and Project now run service from end to end. Jobs are organised and scheduled, then completed by technicians on site. Time is captured against the job, and machine failures are tracked over time, so recurring problems show up in the data. Access rights were tailored so technicians see exactly what they need.
Automation: building robots as projects
The division that manufactures robotic arms runs on Manufacturing with proper bills of materials, combined with Project and project budgeting. Complex builds are now planned, costed and tracked as projects rather than estimated from experience.
Finance: one group, nine companies, one view
Multi-company and multi-currency accounting consolidate the group. Analytic accounts and budgets track each business line, and work-in-progress accounting covers project bills and expenses. Budget versus actual reporting now reaches purchase orders, so overspend shows up before it’s committed. Supplier bills are created automatically once received goods are validated, and accounting exports feed the reporting the finance team relies on.
After go-live: a platform that keeps improving
Go-live was the start of the relationship, not the end of the project. Since then, John Hart and WMSSoft have scoped and delivered around twenty further enhancements under a pre-paid support plan. Each one was defined in its own statement of work, so cost and outcome were agreed before anyone wrote code.
- Field Service upgrades delivered in stages: calendar and Gantt views for scheduling technicians, and new job reports.
- Budget reporting extended to purchase orders, with improved budget report exports.
- Project, analytic account and budget improvements for individual business lines.
- Invoice layouts that show product lines and deposit payments clearly to customers.
- Small but constant refinements that keep the system matched to how the business actually works.
The results
- Nine companies and multiple currencies on one platform, with consolidated group financials, live in six months.
- Four divisions, each with a solution built around its own problems, sharing one database.
- Faster, more accurate quoting for high-value machinery.
- Real-time inventory visibility and faster procurement for spare parts.
- End-to-end service management, from scheduling to field execution to machine failure history.
- Robotic builds planned and costed properly with BOMs and project budgets.
- Budget control that catches overspend at the purchase order, not at month end.
- A long-term partnership: more than a year of continuous improvement since go-live.
What multi-division businesses can take from this
- A recent ERP isn’t a reason to stay. If the system has stopped helping the business grow, the cost of standing still keeps compounding.
- One platform doesn’t mean one process. Multi-company structures and analytic accounting let each division work its own way while finance still sees one group.
- Scope every change in writing. Statements of work keep customisations deliberate, costed and easy to maintain through upgrades.
- Plan for life after go-live. The biggest gains often come in the year after launch, once users know what to ask for.
Frequently asked questions
Can Odoo run several companies and divisions with different processes?
Yes. Odoo’s multi-company features keep each company’s transactions separate while sharing customers, products and users where needed, and analytic accounting tracks performance by division. John Hart runs nine companies and four operationally different divisions on one Odoo database.
How long does a multi-company Odoo implementation take?
It depends on scope, data quality and how quickly decisions are made. John Hart’s nine-company, four-division implementation took six months from start to go-live, including data migration from its previous ERP.
Is it worth replacing an ERP that’s only a few years old?
Sometimes. If the existing system still fits the business, improving it is usually cheaper. If it has become a ceiling, as John Hart’s had, the ongoing cost of workarounds and slow decisions can outweigh the cost of moving.
References (Managing Director and CFO) available on request.
Running several companies or divisions on a system that has stopped moving you forward? Let’s talk about what one platform could do for you.