Customer: Strong Spas

Location: Northumberland, PA

Solution: Cargas Software Evaluation & Project Management Services

Strong Spas is one of the largest hot tub manufacturers in the world, but their business is not just about selling products. It’s about offering customers tranquility, well-being, and an opportunity to connect with family and friends. Strong believes that some things can’t be mass produced, which is why they custom-build each of their luxury spas at one of their Pennsylvania facilities.

Strong sells their spas through a network of dealers, big box stores like Costco, BJ’s, and Sam’s Club, and online through Amazon.com. To support their warranty program, they have a network of service technicians who maintain their products. Their three retail locations offer spa parts and accessories, as well as related health and wellness products like saunas and massage chairs.

Strong is pursuing aggressive expansion and expects to see 20–30 percent growth this year. To support their plans for the future, Strong needed a solid foundation of technology and efficient business processes.

A Gordian Knot

Strong had the right software solutions in place, but they weren’t functioning properly. At the core of their business was Dynamics GP for accounting and payroll, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for sales and marketing, and a custom-built solution for orders and manufacturing. The implementations of Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM were poor, without the necessary configurations to align the software with Strong’s workflows or proper training for the Strong team. At one time, all three systems were integrated, but the integrations were unstable and easily broken, and support was lacking. With faulty integrations, information was not being passed between solutions as needed.

“We had a lot of issues and fundamental mistakes inside of our core systems,” explained Chuck Moore, Operations Manager. “Information wasn’t coming over from our core system, which is Great Plains, and feeding into the CRM system.”

Strong had left its former IT partners behind and was using Cargas for software support, but support alone was not enough. Although individual problems and incidents were identified and submitted to Cargas, fixes were not permanent because the underlying problem was much larger.

“When people were writing tickets to say this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work, it really wasn’t solving the root cause of the problem,” said Moore. “What we really lacked was somebody standing back and looking at the overall picture.”

Rather than spend time and money putting out small fires daily, Strong recognized the need to reevaluate their systems as a whole and make changes from the ground up.

“It became rather clear that we needed to be creative in terms of how we attacked our IT systems,” said Moore.

Identifying all of the problems, developing a plan to resolve them, and executing that plan were daunting tasks and required expertise in the software Strong was using, as well as a deep understanding of Strong’s business processes. Moore was tasked with finding an outside partner with the necessary skills to manage the project.

Untangling the Knot

Because Strong was already utilizing Cargas for software support, Moore reached out to see if they could help him tackle this global IT project. A Great Plains (GP) partner since 1993 and the first certified Microsoft CRM partner in the world, Cargas had the extensive expertise required and was ready and willing to partner with Strong.

Cargas staffer Jon Mumma came on board as the project manager. His first task was to understand Strong’s business and software solutions inside and out, from how Strong was using each system, to what was going wrong, to Strong’s vision for the future. Mumma went through an extensive education process with Moore and interviewed the members of the Cargas support team who had worked with Strong in the past. He also led an extensive system evaluation of the custom manufacturing software to fully understand its capabilities. With all of the information laid out in front of them, Moore and Mumma began to plan.

“We developed what were the priorities in terms of things that we wanted to fix,” said Moore. “And from that standpoint, then we began to create a project plan to solve our problems.”

With Mumma at the helm, Strong and Cargas embarked on a 12-month project to give Strong the full functionality it needed out of its systems. The project involved several major initiatives including extensive Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM training for Strong’s employees, re-implementing Dynamics CRM with the right configuration for Strong’s business, and building or repairing integrations between the systems for proper data flow.

Because integration was a major problem in the past, Mumma and the Cargas team set up triggers to notify Strong employees if information is not transferred properly between systems. With this process in place, Strong is aware of problems right away and can immediately take steps to correct them.

“If there are any issues going forward,” said Moore. “We’ll know it every day instead of all of a sudden turning around and realizing that we have all these problems.”

The system evaluation of the manufacturing software revealed that nearly everything it managed could be handled in Dynamics GP, so Mumma and the Cargas team began unhooking the legacy software and transferring its functions to Dynamics GP. The one component of the manufacturing software that remains is a dashboard for Strong’s dealers to use for order entry.

A Foundation for the Future

Thanks to the work of the Strong team, Mumma, and the Cargas team, Strong is seeing the benefits of fully functioning systems. Reliable integrations are streamlining account management and providing the reporting functionality necessary for better business insight. Proper training for Strong employees is transforming them into knowledgeable, efficient users of Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM. Removing the manufacturing software has further streamlined operations and reduced IT costs. And there’s more to come.

We are a growing company, and we want to continue to grow at a very fast rate. You can’t do that without good systems in place.”

Chuck Moore, Operations Manager of Strong Spas

Strong has been focused on the fundamentals and cleaning up the core of their business. Now, they are ready to look to the future and some new projects that will have a big impact on their customers. In the coming months, Strong intends to implement a POS solution for their retail stores and an EDI solution to manage orders from big box stores, as well as revamp the dealer dashboard from the legacy manufacturing software to offer product tracking.

“We have come up with a strategy for how we want to move forward,” said Moore.

The Right Team Makes All the Difference

Strong has always understood the value of technology, and they chose the right solutions for their business. But without proper training and support from their IT partners, Strong couldn’t reap the benefits of their investment.

“I know we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today without Cargas’ and specifically Jon’s help,” said Moore. “You think about all the things that were broken, our business processes were all over the place. I think [Jon] and I partnered really well to team up and say, ok, let’s figure out those fundamentals, develop a project plan, develop a budget, communicate that to our owner, and then move forward in executing that plan.”

Moore also praised the efforts of Cargas team members Charlie Savko, CJ McGuire, and Dave Zezza, who were part of the Strong project.

With their software expertise and project management experience, Cargas gave Strong the tools it needed to build the necessary foundation for success now and in the future.

Wes Kintner - CRM Salesperson

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