MAFU-SHERPA: From Excel to an AI-Assisted Company

When the collaboration began, inventory ran in an elaborate Excel file. As in many growing companies, it was the unofficial system. The first step was deliberately small: a scanner app on Microsoft Power Apps that captures barcodes on the shop floor and writes straight back into the existing tables. No ERP project, no migration: the smallest solution that improves everyday work immediately. Details: Inventory Management with Microsoft Power Apps.

Digital sales grew in parallel. The target audience, CNC contract manufacturers and OEMs, was too small for social media advertising; MAFU-SHERPA needed visibility for prospects actively researching CNC automation. A new website, a video series on the CNC machines, segmented search campaigns with dedicated landing pages, and granular conversion tracking delivered exactly that. Today the website runs in up to 20 languages, with AI-assisted translation. The result: thousands of visitors, hundreds of sales inquiries, and orders worth millions. Details: Digitizing Sales at MAFU-SHERPA.

Only then followed the ERP. Business Central covers the stable workflows in sales, purchasing, warehousing, manufacturing, and accounting; the company's own product logic was not left to the standard. A CPQ configurator built inside it translates customer requirements into bills of materials, routings, and sales quotes; hundreds of quotes have already been produced this way. Details: ERP and CPQ Configurator at MAFU-SHERPA.

Around the ERP, the manual in-between steps have been disappearing since. The DATEV export to the tax advisor is a reproducible step instead of an Excel task. The details are in the case study Automated DATEV Export from Business Central. A cash-flow forecast additionally reads open orders, purchase orders, invoices, and VAT directly from Business Central through custom-built interfaces and shows the bank balance months ahead.

The delivered machines return value as well: more than 100 robots send productivity data into a customer portal every day, where each customer sees only their own machines. A technical log file became a continuous proof of value for sales and service, and the data basis on which pay-per-use financing models are planned to build. Details: Customer Portal for Machine Productivity at MAFU-SHERPA.

And sales itself? An AI sales assistant reads the websites of potential customers and scores the fit against the actual buying signals: machine park, lot sizes, processes. Then it drafts the outreach. The salesperson reviews and sends. The best criteria of an experienced salesperson are translated into repeatable signals. Details: Targeted Sales for Camera-Guided CNC Automation.

Each of these steps was the smallest useful one on its own. Together they add up to a company where data flows from the first inquiry to the running machine, and where AI works wherever it carries its weight. Manual effort for staff and the tax advisor goes down, decisions on productivity and profitability rest on live data, and the value of the robots is visible to every customer at any time.