An NDIS healthcare distributor consolidated onto Odoo.

The brief

A healthcare-supplies provider serving B2C and B2B customers across NDIS, home-care and aged-care channels. The operation comprises hundreds of SKUs, multi-warehouse fulfilment, and a customer base that includes plan-managed individuals, families, and large care organisations.

Cin7 had supported the business through earlier growth but was no longer capable of accommodating its scale. The warehouse was operated on Descartes WMS, carrier connectivity was outsourced to a UK-based integrator that brokered the link between Cin7 and MachShip, and the B2B desk ran entirely on Excel spreadsheets. Each system had grown in organically, and the leadership team could not rely on operational figures without manual reconciliation.

What we found

• Cin7 was the system of record only in name. Inventory diverged between Cin7 and Shopify, and finance reconciled records manually at month-end.
• The B2B desk was operated through Excel spreadsheets. Trade buyers contacted the office by telephone, requested quotes by email, or used the B2C storefront with manual price overrides applied subsequently. Pricing, account hierarchies, and contract terms were maintained in workbooks held by individual staff.
• Descartes WMS sat between the ERP and warehouse operations. Maintaining the integration added recurring cost and an additional layer of latency that was no longer warranted at the company’s scale.
• Carrier integration was outsourced to a UK-based intermediary. A third-party platform brokered the connection between Cin7 and MachShip, introducing a recurring fee, integration latency, and limited visibility into shipment-level data.
• NDIS, home-care and aged-care logic was held informally by individual staff. Eligibility rules, plan-managed billing, bundling, and product substitutions were all administered manually.
• Identity was fragmented across the organisation. Separate credentials existed for the ERP, storefront, email, and various SaaS tools acquired by the marketing team over time.

What we did

Migrated the ERP from Cin7 to Odoo and delivered more than thirteen custom Odoo modules aligned to the documented operating procedures of the business — NDIS pricing logic, bundling and substitutions, claims-aware fulfilment, plan-manager workflows, and the B2B account model the office had been operating informally for several years.

Retired Descartes WMS and consolidated warehouse management directly within the Odoo platform, eliminating the integration layer between the ERP and warehouse operations and removing the recurring licence cost.

Built a direct Odoo-to-MachShip integration module, replacing the UK-based carrier integrator entirely. Carrier rates, label generation, manifesting, and tracking now flow natively from Odoo with no intermediary, no recurring third-party fees, and full shipment-level visibility.

Implemented Shopify Plus as the B2C storefront with bespoke delivery and payment customisations to address clinical-supplies edge cases — including signature on delivery, scheduled and recurring orders, and plan-managed payment pathways.

Delivered a separate custom B2B storefront for trade and care-organisation buyers — including quote-to-order workflows, account hierarchies, contract pricing, and back-office approval flows. The Excel-driven B2B desk transitioned onto the platform.

Implemented an integration service on Azure that owns the data flow between Odoo, both storefronts, payment providers, and the finance ledger — with idempotent events, audit trails, retry logic, and a single canonical contract subscribed to by every connected system.

Deployed Microsoft 365 and Entra ID as the identity backbone for the organisation — a single login per staff member, with provisioning and offboarding orchestrated centrally.

The phased rollout

Every engagement is delivered using The Ascent Method — Map, Architect, Build, Operate.

1. P1
   Map: discovery and target-state design (weeks 1–8). Structured workshops with operations, finance, the warehouse team, and the B2B desk. Documented current-state inventory, pricing, fulfilment, carrier integration, and the manual workarounds previously not formalised.
2. P2
   Architect + Build: Odoo with 13+ custom modules (weeks 6–28). NDIS pricing, bundling, plan-manager workflows, claims-aware fulfilment, and the B2B account model — all developed and tested in advance of cutover. Native Odoo warehouse management configured to absorb Descartes’ responsibilities.
3. P3
   Build: Cin7 + Descartes retirement and Odoo cutover (weeks 24–32). Phased data migration with reconciliation gates and no order outage during the transition period. Warehouse management transitioned to native Odoo on cutover.
4. P4
   Build: storefronts and direct Odoo–MachShip integration (weeks 20–40). Shopify B2C and the custom B2B storefront integrated to Odoo through the integration spine. The custom Odoo–MachShip module replaced the UK-based carrier integrator.
5. P5
   Build: identity and integration spine (weeks 32–48). Microsoft 365 and Entra ID deployed across the organisation; the integration service in production with audit logging and retry capability.
6. P6
   Operate: handover and warranty (weeks 40–56). Runbooks, training, and a four-week warranty period.

Outcomes

B2C and B2B channels operate on a single ERP-backed source of truth, and the B2B desk has transitioned from Excel spreadsheets onto the platform: quotes, approvals, and contract pricing are managed within the system, rather than alongside it.

Three legacy systems (Cin7, Descartes WMS, and the UK-based carrier integrator) were retired during the engagement, removing recurring licence and integration fees and eliminating layers of operational latency.

Carrier connectivity now runs directly between Odoo and MachShip through a single owned integration module, with no intermediary in the path and full shipment-level visibility.

NDIS, home-care and aged-care pricing and bundling rules are codified, with audit trails that the finance team can present in support of operational figures.

Identity is centralised across the organisation; new staff receive the appropriate access on the first day of employment and access is revoked at the point of departure.

The platform established the foundation for the subsequent data and reporting engagement — see the related case below.

“We thought we wanted a Cin7 replacement. What we actually needed was the platform underneath it — the rules, the integrations, the identity. We got all of it in one engagement, and three legacy systems went out the door at the same time.”Operations Director, Healthcare-supplies provider