‘On a remote mountain trail, a lonely cyclist is riding the race of is life. For years he has been training for this moment. Neither costs or effort was spared; you have to invest to be the best. With a customized bicycle, a team that is built around him and personalized training techniques, he is riding up front. But the question is for how long? He is aware that he cannot stay up front with the peloton behind him…’

We often compare Boltrics, our customer base and our way of working with a peloton. Where this comes from is for many customers often a question. Because one thing is for certain: the average logistics service provider does not care too much about unmotorized vehicles. Then what is the reason that this cycling term is regularly mentioned together with Boltrics in the same sentence? We are happy to explain it to you below.

The originating of Boltrics: the three-man peloton

The birth of Boltrics dates from nine years ago, in 2010. Three cold storages got together in that year. They were looking for a sector-wide solution, since software systems for selling- and production companies did not meet the need of a logistics service provider. If they would try to reinvent the wheel over and over again, this would firstly cost more time and secondly more money. Therefore, they decided to work with each other and branch organization Nekovri. But there was one important demand: the system needed to be up-to-date all the time, so this development stage did not need to happen again every 3 to 5 years. The three-man peloton was a fact.

The peloton with Microsoft Dynamics as the driving force

To meet this future-proof requirement, Boltrics took the Microsoft Dynamics platform as program basis. You can also view this decision as a peloton collaboration. To keep on developing a software solution requires human capacity, effort and financial resources. By choosing for a business solution of Microsoft as platform, all of our customers profit from the Microsoft-power regarding investments, recourses and commitment. With this power in our backs, we can make the translation to our customers’ needs, so they can work with the latest technologies specified for their market. Concluding, Microsoft sets the racing cycles available, we adjust them to your market.

With the peloton towards collective customization

The collaborate decision of the three-man peloton, the branch organization and Boltrics to go for a standard (branch) solution, is obviously for a reason too. If more and more organizations would use the system and they all require customization, keeping the entire platform up-to-date would become impossible. This automatically means that when a new development is realized for one customer, this feature is accessible for the rest of the customer base. Without that they had to come up with the idea themselves, or even pay for the development. This way everyone profits from each other and customization is realized in a standard solution. That is what we call collective customization.

A peloton goes for duration

This is the power of the Boltrics peloton. Where the rider from the first paragraph is riding up front, he knows that this will not be for a long period. His specially designed bicycle only needs one defect and a whole team is needed to solve this. Often the technique is so tightly designed, that repairing it is a lost cause. How different is this from the Boltrics peloton, where every rider helps each other with defects, where solutions can easily be copied and where we can stay up front together. No big bang, but incremental development. No tidal wave, but getting better step by step. This results in one solution where more than 130 customers make use of, for nine years already. All with the same needs, all in the same peloton.

Without riders, there is no peloton.

Boltrics likes to thanks all of our customers. Without you it would not be possible to hold on to this philosophy and our solution would not be as complete as it is today. Without riders, there is no peloton.