Industry: Boody Australia
Vertical: eCommerce.
Location: Australia
Challenge: Extreme system fragmentation across QuickBooks Commerce, Xero, Salesforce, and multiple third-party apps, creating data silos, a lack of financial visibility, and an inability to scale a high-volume, multi-channel, multi-region business.
Solution: A strategic, accountant-led migration to a single, unified Odoo ERP platform, consolidating global sales channels, inventory, accounting, and CRM to create one source of truth.
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Website: https://www.boody.com.au/
Executive Summary
Boody is a premier sustainable apparel brand with a complex and rapidly growing global footprint. Their success across multiple sales channels—including three regional Shopify Plus stores (AU, NZ, EU), a B2B wholesale portal, and major marketplace partners like The Iconic and David Jones—had pushed their fragmented software ecosystem to its absolute limit. With critical data siloed across QuickBooks Commerce, Xero, Salesforce, and a web of third-party apps, the business lacked a unified view of its operations, creating significant financial blind spots and a barrier to future growth.
Recognising the need for a foundational transformation, Boody partnered with WAO Group to replace the operational chaos with a single, global source of truth in Odoo. Our accountant-led methodology focused on architecting a robust financial core capable of handling immense transactional volume (up to 12,000 orders per day) and orchestrating a complex network of custom integrations with 3PLs and channel partners. The result is a powerful, scalable, and unified ERP platform that provides Boody with the real-time visibility and financial control essential for managing a modern global brand.
The Challenge: When a Global Brand Outgrows Its "Best-of-Breed" Systems
Before Odoo, Boody’s operations were a masterclass in managing complexity, but the systems themselves were creating immense friction. The business was running on a "best-of-breed" stack that had become a significant liability.
The core challenges were not just inefficiencies; they were strategic risks to a high-growth global business:
- Extreme System Fragmentation:
Critical business data was scattered across a dozen different platforms. Inventory lived in QuickBooks Commerce (formerly TradeGecko), financials in Xero, and customer relationships in Salesforce. This "software sprawl" made a single, reliable view of the business impossible. - A Complete Lack of Real-Time Financial Visibility:
The disconnect between their inventory/sales platform and their accounting system was the central pain point. It meant there was no real-time view of inventory valuation, true product margins, or channel profitability. Financial reporting was a manual, backward-looking process of data consolidation -
Inability to Scale:
With a high volume of transactions across multiple Shopify stores and marketplaces, the existing integrations were becoming points of failure. The system was not architected to handle the projected growth to over 10,000 orders per day. - Complex Integration Web:
The business relied on a complex network of connections to global 3PLs (eStore in AU/NZ, Bleckmann in the EU), EDI partners (SPS Commerce), and marketplace aggregators (Channel Advisor). Managing this ecosystem without a central, unified hub was a major operational and technical burden.
Boody needed to move from a collection of apps that merely "talked" to each other to a single, unified platform that worked as one.
The Solution: A Finance-First Approach to Global Unification
Boody required more than a technical integrator; they needed a strategic partner who could understand the financial and operational complexities of a global, multi-channel brand. WAO Group's accountant-led methodology was designed to architect a solution from the financial core outwards.
1. Architecting a Scalable Financial Foundation:
Our first priority was to replace the separate QuickBooks and Xero systems with Odoo's unified Inventory and Accounting modules. This immediately solved the core problem, ensuring that every sale, return, and stock movement across their global operations was a single, real-time transaction on a unified general ledger. This provided, for the first time, a true, live view of the company's financial position.
2. Orchestrating a Complex Integration Ecosystem:
A significant and challenging part of the project was managing the re-integration of Boody's critical partners into the new Odoo hub. This was not a simple "plug-and-play" task. Our role was to act as the central strategic lead, project managing the development and connection of integrations with:
- Global 3PLs:
Working directly with eStore (AU/NZ) and Bleckmann (EU) to ensure seamless order fulfillment and inventory synchronisation across continents.
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Marketplace Aggregators:
Managing the development of a custom integration between Odoo and Channel Advisor to handle sales from The Iconic, Zalando, and The Market. - OCR & EDI:
Overseeing the custom integration for Xtracta for OCR automation and scoping the potential for a future SPS Commerce connection for EDI orders.
3. Unifying All Sales Channels:
We consolidated Boody's diverse sales channels into Odoo, creating a single point of management and reporting. This included connecting their three regional Shopify Plus stores, replacing the QuickBooks B2B portal with Odoo's native eCommerce/B2B functionality, and integrating the marketplace sales via Channel Advisor.
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A Rigorous, De-Risked Process:
A project of this scale and complexity demanded a meticulous, structured approach. We utilised our Odoo Success Blueprint methodology, conducting 28 deep-dive requirements workshops and 12 workflow workshops to ensure every unique process, from Shopify returns management with Loop to B2B sales, was mapped, validated, and configured correctly before the full implementation began.
The Results: A Unified Platform for Global Growth
The migration to Odoo has provided Boody with a powerful, stable, and scalable foundation, replacing fragmentation and financial ambiguity with integration and control.
- A Single, Global Source of Truth:
By consolidating over a dozen applications into one platform, Boody now has a unified, real-time view of its entire global business, from sales and inventory to CRM and finance. - Real-Time Financial Control:
The native integration of inventory and accounting provides an accurate, live view of inventory valuation, channel profitability, and overall financial health. -
Scalability to Handle High Volume:
The new architecture is built to handle massive transaction volumes, ensuring the system can support Boody's continued growth without performance issues. - A Unified Multi-Channel Commerce Platform:
All sales channels—D2C, B2B, and marketplaces—are now managed and reported on from a single, central hub, dramatically improving efficiency and providing clear, consolidated insights. - Streamlined Global Operations:
With a unified platform connecting their global 3PLs and sales channels, Boody can manage its international operations with far greater efficiency and accuracy.
"We worked with WAO for several years and always appreciated their team’s professionalism, responsiveness, and willingness to help us navigate complex ERP challenges. They’re a great group of people who genuinely care about their clients’ success."
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