Havehandel is one of Denmark’s largest suppliers of garden materials to private customers, and sells exclusively through its e-commerce platform. When Havehandel went live with Shopify, they quickly realized that the standard connector between Business Central and Shopify did not work as expected. Finding a reliable integration became urgent, and Martin Nissen contacted Codeunit. Within a very short time, Havehandel’s integration was deployed on Codeunit’s platform OmniConnect, where all data is now secured and fully traceable through the portal.
“Around the same time we went live with Shopify and discovered that the standard connector wasn’t working properly, I had been in contact with the team behind the PIM system Plytix. They recommended Codeunit for the integration between their system and Business Central. When I visited Codeunit’s website, I saw that they also integrate with Shopify. I thought it couldn’t hurt to send them an email, and Daniel replied immediately that they use their OmniConnect portal for this type of project. It sounded exactly like what I needed!” says Martin Nissen, co-owner of Havehandel.
The standard connector didn’t meet expectations
After Havehandel went live on Shopify using the standard connector, problems started to arise. Martin had to spend a lot of time double-checking all orders to ensure payment methods were correct. Editing an existing order also required changes to be made in Shopify, Business Central, and the inventory system. For example, issuing a refund is easy in Shopify, but this setup required manual handling in Business Central to update the order there as well and ensure that all accounting figures were accurate.
“Before my first online meeting with Daniel from Codeunit, I wrote down all the issues I’d had with Shopify over the previous two weeks. During the meeting, I asked whether Codeunit could help us with these issues, and he said yes to all of them! I really enjoy working with them. There aren’t many Business Central specialists who are as open-minded as Codeunit,” Martin says with a smile.
How the family business Havehandel began
In 2016, Martin and his brother Mark wanted more freedom than being employees, so they asked if they could start working in their father’s company, Holstebro Sand & Grus. Their father, Jens Peter, replied that they would have to generate the revenue to cover their own salaries. The brothers worked four hours a day in their father’s company and four hours building various webshops of their own. That was the beginning of Havehandel.dk. After a few years, when their turnover exceeded that of Holstebro Sand & Grus, their father said, “Perhaps we should join forces in just one company,” and they merged their businesses.
Havehandel.dk is a Danish webshop and supplier of materials for gardens and outdoor projects. Based in Holstebro, the company has grown into one of the country’s largest suppliers in its category and has received awards such as Børsen’s Gazelle Award for rapid growth more than once. Around 35 people work at Havehandel, and their assortment includes approximately 1 000 products. In the near future, Havehandel plans to expand its product range by hundreds of items and enter new international markets. This was one of the reasons for switching to the Shopify e-commerce platform.
The sandbox was crucial to the decision
“After my first meeting with Codeunit, they set up a test environment for us with the integration between Business Central and Shopify, a sandbox that didn’t affect our live environment at all. It was like a mirror of our setup, and in the OmniConnect portal I could see exactly what it would look like if we used Codeunit’s platform. Everything worked perfectly there! I hadn’t even thought about using a sandbox for testing, but that’s what convinced me that Codeunit was the right partner for us,” Martin explains, continuing: “Let’s make this change as quickly as possible, I said.”
Codeunit handled all the mapping in the sandbox environment, and once that was completed, the integration itself was installed in about an hour. The entire process, from Havehandel’s first contact with Codeunit to the integration going live, was incredibly fast. This was made possible by Codeunit’s experience with Shopify and their pre-built OmniConnect platform, which is extremely flexible and can be customized to meet customers’ unique needs.
Saving time for customer service and finance
“We save an incredible amount of time by not having to manually handle such a large portion of our orders. Now we only edit orders in Shopify when, for example, a customer wants to add or remove products. The order is then updated automatically in Business Central. That’s probably 50% fewer clicks. Our customer service team has likely saved an hour a day because of this. And it doesn’t stop there. Errors in orders are largely eliminated, and our CFO no longer comes to me with questions about orders created with incorrect payment methods or similar issues. This has saved him and me a lot of time as well,” says Martin.
Full data traceability in the portal
Today, errors with orders are rare, and when they do occur, Martin automatically receives an email notification from the portal. Most recently, an error was triggered when a customer purchased a product that existed only in Shopify and hadn’t been created in Business Central. Once the issue was fixed, Martin simply clicked “retry” in the portal, and the order was approved. Havehandel’s current project with Codeunit will ensure that this type of issue does not occur again.
“We’ll soon be going live with our new PIM system, Plytix, which Codeunit is helping us integrate with Business Central and Shopify. Then we’ll only need to create products in Plytix, and from there they’ll automatically sync to both Shopify and Business Central. In Plytix, it will be easy to upload product descriptions, images, prices, weight and more, and to keep track of what information is required to publish products in BC and Shopify. This will save us even more time. With this structure, we’ll be able to create far more products, much faster, than we’re used to,” Martin says.
Going live with Plytix before peak season
“It’s going to be really great once this project is live as well. Everything has worked so smoothly with Codeunit, and they say yes to everything! I genuinely enjoy working with them. Our next project together might be for our other e-commerce business, fastelavnstoenden.dk, where we’d also like to switch to Shopify. But first, Havehandel’s peak season is coming, and during that time we don’t have time for anything other than handling orders. With spring arriving and temperatures rising, everyone wants to get out into their gardens and make them beautiful, marking the start of three very busy months for us,” Martin concludes.
