Proof of concept, in testingRema Holland B.V. · Axel Johnson International · Maastricht, the Netherlands
One registration route for repair, inspection, calibration and returns
A multilingual service portal where customers register in advance and that creates a service quote in Business Central directly.
This project is a proof of concept in its test phase. The description shows what has been built and is now being tested, go-live follows.
- Client
- Rema Holland B.V.
- Part of
- Axel Johnson International
- Location
- Maastricht, the Netherlands
- Sector
- Industrial wholesale, lifting and hoisting equipment
- Year
- 2026
- Role
- External project manager, process design, build and test phase
Situation and question
Rema Holland B.V. in Maastricht is an international B2B wholesaler and technical service for lifting and hoisting equipment, part of Axel Johnson International. Rema repairs, inspects and calibrates customers' lifting equipment and handles returns, for dealers and wholesalers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France.
Shipments arrived without registration or with incomplete information. Logistics had to work out whose parcel it was, sales had to call and email afterwards to find the customer, dealer and job, and the workshop learned late what was coming. That meant waiting, double work, little clarity for the customer and retyping into the ERP.
After the Business Central go-live we worked on the service process as external project manager, with one question: a clear route from registration to completion, within the existing landscape of Business Central, CaptureTech, OpenText Exstream and Axinter's Azure integration layer.
What we built
A multilingual service portal at service.rema.eu where the customer registers a repair, inspection, calibration, warranty claim or return in advance. The customer immediately gets a document number from Business Central and a service and returns form with a QR code for the box.
Internally Rema has a back office with dashboard, workload, planning, notes and notifications, a workshop screen for a television and a logistics intake for shipments without registration. Business Central remains the leading system. In test phase since November 2026.
For the customer
Register in advance, get a number straight away
One registration route for five kinds of work: repair, inspection and testing, calibration of dynamometers, returns and warranty. For each kind the form only asks what matters, in Dutch, English, German or French, including the mails, the form and the terms.
- Products found in Rema's item list, with serial or batch number, complaint and photos
- Dealer or end user, with the right route for quote and invoice
- Addresses from the public registers of the Netherlands, Flanders and France
- Acceptance of the terms, a digital signature and a verified email address
- A number straight away and the form as PDF and by mail, with a QR code
- A status page in six steps, with the statuses from Business Central
For Rema
One place for sales, workshop and administration
The back office shows what is coming in, where every request stands and whose turn it is: customer, sales, workshop, logistics or administration. New requests go automatically to a colleague who speaks the customer's language, whoever has the least open work first.
- Dashboard with counters, a status board per phase and the oldest open request
- Service orders and returns in one list, with filters and a layout per colleague
- Request detail with products, photos, notes and a complete history
- Workload per handler and a planning that shows how long something waits where
- Roles and rights, inviting colleagues yourself and personal notifications
- Terms and privacy statement per language managed in house, every version kept
Workshop and logistics
See what is coming and what has waited too long
The workshop has a screen that refreshes itself every minute, with five lanes from analysis to waiting for parts and per product the number of days, orange from five and red from ten. Logistics has its own role for shipments that arrive without registration: recorded with photos, placed in quarantine, and sales gets a notification to complete them.
- Logistics recognises every registered shipment by its QR code
- Logistics records, sales completes, logistics releases from quarantine
- Sales can also handle such a shipment as a return
Integration with Business Central
Business Central stays in the lead
Through the Gate API of Axinter's Azure integration layer the portal creates the service quote or sales return order, with a key that prevents a repeated call from creating a second document. Every five to sixty minutes the numbers, customer, salesperson, warehouse location and the status per item line come back.
- The salesperson in Business Central becomes the handler in the portal
- Statuses come from Business Central, nothing is hard coded
- Shipments without registration get a service quote in quarantine right away
- A queue with retries, and mails only once the number is there
- Process design, message contracts and integration brief written by us
Security and privacy
Secure by design, down to the database
The browser has no direct access to the database. Every read and write goes through database functions that check a server secret, an access token per request or the role of the signed in colleague, and row level security is on for every table. Hosting and database run in the EU, in Dublin, at Vercel and Supabase, providers certified for SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001. The portal itself claims no certification.
- A random access token per request, a number never opens a request on its own
- Photos through signed links and deleted automatically after ninety days
- Verification codes with limits on requests and attempts
- Security headers on every page and dependencies updated weekly
- No analytics, no tracking and no cookie banner needed
- A processing agreement and a security review for Rema and Axinter's IT
Architecture and technology
Built to be reused
Next.js with React and TypeScript, Supabase Postgres in the EU, Resend for mail in four languages and a PDF with QR code from our own code. Everything that differs per company sits in one configuration: a second company in the group is a second configuration, not new software. Statuses and terms live in the database, so Rema adjusts them without a release.
- Design in Rema's house style, light and dark, on every screen
- Documentation as part of the code and a changelog in plain language
- Manuals per department and process models in Dutch and English
Approach
- 01
Analysis with the departments
October 2026: the current process with sales, logistics, workshop and administration, and a baseline from the ERP exports.
- 02
Process design and proof of concept
A process design from registration to completion and a working proof of concept on service.rema.eu.
- 03
Decision in the management team
On 15 October management chose the direction: one registration route, the customer registers in advance and gets a number and a form with a QR code.
- 04
Back office, workshop and logistics
Late October and early November: back office, roles, workload, planning, notifications, logistics intake and the workshop screen.
- 05
Integration and security
Statuses from Business Central, the integration through Axinter's layer and a security review, with manuals, presentations and process models.
- 06
Test phase
November 2026: testing in a test environment, with scanning on receipt in the warehouse management system. Go-live follows after the test phase. One point of contact for management, departments, the ERP partner and Axinter's IT.
Result
- registration route for five kinds of work
- 1
- languages, from form to terms
- 4
- steps on the customer's status page
- 6
- roughly, from first analysis to test phase
- 5 weeks
The proof of concept shows the whole route. Customers register in advance and immediately get a number, a form for the box and a status page. Logistics recognises every shipment by its QR code, sales has all the details before the goods arrive and the workshop sees on a screen what is coming. The service quote or return order is in Business Central as soon as the customer submits, without retyping. Rema manages colleagues, roles, status mapping and the legal texts itself, and the setup can be reused for other companies in the group.
Technology
Together with
Axinter, Rema's holding company, IT and Azure integration layer · D4B, Business Central partner · CaptureTech, warehouse management
For those who want to know, the technology behind this project.
