Team Horner

The challenge: Getting out from underwater

You may not know the name Team Horner, but chances are you’ve benefitted from what it does. As one of the largest manufacturing and distribution companies in the swimming pool and spa markets, Team Horner and its multiple brands (AquaCal, TropiClear, StoneHardscapes, among others), ensures the water used in pools and spas in resorts, rehabilitation facilities, wellness centers, and homes, is safe and clean.

But multiple, disparate business units often create challenges, such as data silos, system and teams connectivity, and more. For Team Horner, challenges included a lack of insight across the organization, with data needed immediately not being available for weeks or longer. It was finding inventory difficult to manage, field service calls and training were taking far too long, and both the customer experience and the company’s ability to innovate were not all they could be.

The solution: a cross-team, cross-functional, cross-platform deep dive

Having had great success working with Argano to upgrade platforms and workflows within one of its major brands (AquaCal, which Argano moved to Dynamics), Team Horner once again chose to work with the leader in high-performance operations solutions and strategies.

The end solution would comprise a near total implementation of Dynamics 365 (Finance, Supply Chain Management, Sales, and Customer Service — in addition to the earlier implementation of Field Service), Azure Data Lake, Fabric, Power BI, Power Virtual Agents (now Copilot Studio), as well as technology and services from Argano, including Argano Data Insights (a data warehousing solution) and organizational change management.

The results: A bigger splash

Leveraging its expertise in the manufacturing and distribution verticals, alongside experience in Dynamics, data and analytics, and systems integration, Argano implemented a framework that helped Team Horner across multiple functional areas.

Team Horner can now enjoy near real-time reporting instead of relying on data that was often as much as 30 days old. How reports are generated has been transformed as well: getting a report once took a week or more and relied on on-premises workstations; it now takes only minutes with reports accessible by mobile devices.

With D365 SCM in place, Team Horner has also seen a 10% drop in unsold inventory, which not only reduces storage and production costs, but can help drive revenue as well by helping the company stay more aligned with consumer demand. And its customers — thanks to D365 Customer Service — can now handle demand themselves, managing their own accounts, placing their own orders, and more.

In field service, Team Horner made significant improvements as well. According to CFO Bob Kulstad, as a direct result of Argano expertise and tools such as Power Virtual Agents, new field service reps are ready for customer visits in about two weeks instead of about two months.

With its data sources connected, its customers and teams better equipped, and real-time information now available to every stakeholder, it’s safe to say that business is going swimmingly for Team Horner.