About Dallmayr
Have an office, factory, or university with a constant supply of coffee? Dallmayr might be behind it.
As the largest delicatessen business and one of the best-known coffee brands in Europe, Dallmayr has a rich history spanning over 300 years and remains in family ownership today.
In 1991, Dallmayr launched in Hungary, becoming one of the first franchises in the country. Dallmayr Hungary is the market leader in the vending sector. Unique in its offerings, it is the only vending and HoReCa company in the country that provides its own roasted coffee.
But Dallmayr doesn't just sell coffee; they provide comprehensive services alongside it. To meet each customer's specific needs, the team must maintain thoughtfully designed workflows and a well-structured infrastructure. This comes with unique challenges.
The challenge: How do you scale your business when your systems don’t support you?
Around 2020, the Dallmayr Hungary team started offering custom services in addition to their regular franchise offerings.
To manage their expansion, they needed a seamless, efficient order-to-cash process with accurate tracking that wouldn't overwhelm their back office. But their systems weren't designed to work together.
- Processing orders and keeping inventory up to date had to be done manually, which meant long wait times for customers
- Scaling back-office staff would have been costly, and the company needed a solution that wouldn’t threaten profit margins, and
- Less tech-savvy service technicians often made administrative mistakes that made it difficult to plan maintenance work.
Despite Dallmayr’s best efforts, their outdated systems could no longer support their expansion. Instead they found themselves battling errors, delays, and time wasted on fixes.
From legacy tech dilemma to complete system shutdown
With legacy technology, you often face a tough choice: should you stick with what you know and try to fix it, or invest the time and effort to migrate to a new tool?
The Dallmayr team was at this crossroads when their ERP system, Navision, was no longer meeting their needs as it became too outdated, creating an urgent need for an upgrade. At the same time, their CRM was missing crucial customer information and could no longer manage their complex contract workflows. They faced a dilemma: should they try upgrading a familiar but aging system or switch to Business Central?
The final nudge, however, came when their CRM tool got discontinued, causing a complete system shutdown. As a result, the back office was struggling to submit logistics documents and invoices in time.
Partnering with VisualLabs to tackle Dallmayr’s complex challenges
The Dallmayr team knew they needed a comprehensive solution capable of managing everything efficiently but didn’t know where to start without external help.
Two companies were initially tasked with the challenge, but the deeper they went into the details, the more complex the project became. Eventually, these two companies decided not to take on the project. VisualLabs, on the other hand, accepted the challenge, viewing it as a never-before-seen problem they were excited to solve.
As Gábor Doktor, Franchise Director of Dallmayr Hungary explains:
“We are not an IT company. Our focus is to provide the best coffee and services for our customers. Having the right infrastructure is crucial for seamless operations — and we could not have built it without VisualLabs.”
The solution: Building a system that works for them, not the other way around
To address Dallmayr’s challenges, VisualLabs built a custom tech stack made up of several components — each addressing different aspects of their business but designed to be a unified solution.
- Integrated the webshop with Dynamics 365 Business Central to replace the aging ERP and provide real-time control over operations.
- Automated key back-office workflows to move away from manual order intakes and invoicing.
- Added custom-built Power Apps to automate customer service and contract management without disrupting Dallmayr’s complex workflows.
- Introduced a mobile app for contractors to simplify tasks from refills to reporting.
- Installed automated telemetric sensors in each vending machine, feeding consumption and revenue data directly into Business Central.
- Implemented Power BI to integrate and visualise this data, empowering leadership with actionable insights.
The results: fully digitalised processes, optimised costs, and a 30% increase in efficiency
Thanks to this tailored solution, Dallmayr Hungary was able to
- improve the efficiency of back-office processes by 30%,
- decrease outstanding balance and overdue invoices by 50%, and
- efficiently control stock levels for approximately 6000 different products across 70 stock locations
With these improvements, Dallmayr can now offer custom prices that match each client's unique needs and settle service documents within just 10 days after the month ends.
As Gábor Doktor sums up:
“We have completely eliminated paper-based processes, transitioning to full digitalisation. VisualLabs helped us implement a solution that addressed all of our challenges and improved our efficiency, all while optimising our licensing costs so we could stay within budget.”
Having seen these impressive results, the parent company in Germany has shown keen interest in the tech stack developed in Hungary, signalling a promising future for continued growth.
Dallmayr’s collaboration with VisualLabs is far from over. They continue to explore new opportunities, particularly around ways to use AI to take their services to the next level.
If you want to experience the Dallmayr coffee feeling, visit the Dallmayr Shop and select the business segment you’re interested in, whether it's Vending or HoReCa. You can also listen to a recent podcast about the future of coffee (in Hungarian).
