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Case of success

Logo Maystar laboratories
Logo Sage

Technology at the service of beauty and wellbeing


Maystar laboratories building

Client: Maystar laboratories.

Sector: Cosmetic laboratories.

Profile: With more than 30 years at the service of beauty, Maystar cosmetic laboratories has become a benchmark in the professional beauty sector.

From the start they have developed face and body care products with excellent scientific integrity. They now have a broad range of treatment lines formulated with the best active ingredients to guarantee healthy skin, vital and cared for, helping to combat premature ageing and the stress of modern life and to prolong in time the beauty of the skin.

Objectives: Having reliable information immediately available in order to obtain reports and data online on what is happening in the enterprise and achieving better control of the whole organisation and its products; these were the two objectives that the Maystar executives set themselves as priorities when introducing new ICT tools.

Solution: Sage ERP X3

Distributor: Aritmos

Founded in 1984, the Maystar cosmetic laboratory has developed products to cover all the cosmetic needs of users, adapted to different skin types and all ages. With their own methodology of application, both in their specialised centres and in the consumers' own homes, a combination of both supplies complete health care and unique beauty.

One of their most important marketing achievements was the invention and patenting, in 1991, of a roll-on depilatory system, the most imitated worldwide and still today a benchmark at world level.

Today Maystar has premises of 5,000 m2 from where

they can serve customers in 65 countries worldwide, with a business turnover that goes on growing year after year.

Maystar's R&D&I laboratories also have premises and top-level laboratory equipment. Their human team comprises highly trained professionals in the fields of dermatology and cosmetics, galenic developments and research.

Maystar has also set in train in recent years an expansion programme, with a successful launch in beauty salons, aesthetic medicine clinics and spa treatment centres, in both Spain and abroad.

Improving communications and the availability of information


In the same way as with other areas of its activity, Maystar has been a pioneer in the use of technology. Since 2006 the company has had a cloud-based ERP, but the poor quality of communications in the industrial estate where they were installed made the use of this tool difficult and, above all, did not permit access to the applications and therefore the information with the rapidity that the company needed. This situation compelled them to consider the need to recover control of the ERP and install it at home.

“We not only decided to go back to using our ERP in a local form, incorporating a server in our office, but it was also a good moment for changing the platform",

since, as Gabriel Giménez, Maystar Financial Director, says, “the system we had was very restricted, not very flexible in the exploitation of information or parameterisation of our own application, since for any change we always had to go through the consultants. We could not manage directly in a simple way, or have access to the data. To add a characteristic or a screen was extremely complex, so we considered that in view of the communications problems and, above all, with the aim of getting greater and better control of the whole organization and more efficient access to the information, the best thing to do was to set up a process of migration to an application which would really meet all our needs”.

The installation of Sage ERP X3, by Aritmos, means that we know the margins per article and per customer and from there we can take the best decisions for the company

Gabriel Giménez
Maystar Financial Director

Choosing the most important components


An important factor when Maystar was considering a change of ERP was that the company did not have a specific technology department, so that it was the Financial Director who had to take charge of setting up this new project.

“To start on it, I wrote to Father Christmas with my wish list of everything I thought we needed so that we could have it in the new ERP. The next step was to make an analysis of everything there was in the market focused on companies of our sort and size, leaving out the largest”.

After this analysis the finalists were the platforms of Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, Abas and even a proposal from their old service provider.



An important benefit is that all the people in the company, independently of their area of work, can get the information they need to do their work instantly, something which was not possible before

Strategic factors


Once we had these candidates on the table, we had to do the most important part of the selection process, studying all of them to find out which would best cover the company's needs and the requirements that the managers had defined as strategic.

Gabriel Giménez explains, “there was one essential requirement which we looked for basically in the new tool, as well as the technical part and parameterisation, which was that the analytical accounting could be done in the way I had thought about, and to this requirement we added also that it should have work flows, so that when a certain event occurred it would trigger actions by various people in the company, thus giving us better control”. “A clear example of this need was the customer risk”, continues Giménez, “if a certain customer exceeds the risk assigned to it in the company, it becomes necessary for a manager to authorise it or not, and this has to happen as fast as possible”. “We separated the needs according to the company departments, finance, logistics and production. In the logistics area we were very interested in being able to work with barcode readers and having the system tailored to handle stock with different batch and series numbers. At the same time, we wanted the sales area to have a system for calculating prices, since in our activity we have a great many customers and products.

Throughout the year we make a great many offers and promotions and the combination of prices is very complex. We needed to arrange so that the application of these prices lists, offers, discounts and promotions would not depend on the person who was taking the order, but rather it should be the system which applied them automatically.

This would allow us to parameterise a whole series of conditions depending on the article, the customer and the month, so that it would give a specific price”, explains the Maystar Financial Director.

The production area was also important for the company management and when the change of application was proposed we wanted, says Giménez, “to have production planning which would analyse the stock and allow us to respond rapidly to needs in this area of the company”.

Sage ERP X3 - Maystar

Once all these points were clear, the next step was to take the final decision. “After the first selection three candidates were left, Sage with its ERP X3, Abas and a third company. We gave them points from one to ten for each characteristic and the company that got most points was Sage ERP X3 and therefore that was the one that won the day”, said Gabriel Giménez.

Business solution centred on the customer


With the design of Sage ERP X3, Sage has put on the market a business management solution based on an avant-garde technological platform, highly adaptable in scale, from both the technical and functional viewpoints. One of its main characteristics is that it allows more users and modules to be added as the organization grows, adapting itself in this way to the real needs. Designed for medium and large companies with international expansion, Sage ERP X3 can be transformed and can advance through technology, in being specially designed for mid-market enterprises with specific goals and requirements in various sectors. Among its main characteristics are: intuitive navigation with interactive graphic processes; a portal for each function with advanced performance indicators, total integration with Office tools; powerful parameterisation tools for greater flexibility; pre-parameterizations for rapid implantation; the existence of reports already integrated and ready to start work immediately and business intelligence tools. The interface, very intuitive and collaborative, based on HTML5, supports multiple browsers and personalization by the user.

Also Sage ERP X3 incorporates extended traceability, from cash to payment orders; the personalization of documents; the flexible configuration of the various legislations applicable; better control over transactions and improved automation.

Sage ERP X3 - Maystar

Migration process


For implementation, Sage proposed to Maystar the participation of Aritmos, one of its partners, expert in the implementation of Sage ERP X3. “From the start of the implementation we have been working with Aritmos, which as well as the installation and maintenance of the Sage ERP, maintains the company's hardware. We also asked them to look at the old application that we had in the cloud and with which it was very difficult to work in local form”.

As soon as Maystar had chosen the technological platform and the partner, the migration process was defined, the phases that the project would have and the way in which they were to be carried out, something that the company management had very clear from the beginning.

“The basic idea that we wanted to get going”, explains Gabriel Giménez, “and therefore the first step in the migration process, was to define which would be the data that we needed to take to the new application and which could remain in the old one. We agreed that we would only migrate the master data, which is none other than the information on customers, suppliers and articles, and the accounting details and balances. This was the minimum information that we needed to continue our activity. We began working with Aritmos about three months before the date scheduled for the migration, compiling all the data and preparing them to be able to do the transfer without problems on the first of January”.

Before the actual migration and as Gabriel Giménez says, “we were doing various trials to see how the application functioned with our data, at the same time keeping the rest of the information in the old application which we could consult whenever we needed to”.

When all these trials were done, the migration took place on the first of January and the data migration was done the day before since, as the Maystar financial director explains, “Sage incorporates what are called Migration Models, with which you can do all kinds of simulations and the tests you need and on the final day you only have to download the data, the necessary information, in the new system and start working. The only parameterization that we needed was that of the system itself”.

Maystar has implanted, with the help of Aritmos, all the modules composing Sage ERP X3 although, as Giménez says, “not all of them have been used in the same way or with the same intensity”.

“There was one aspect which was also very important for us”, adds Gabriel Gimenez, “and that is that the system does not mean that we have to do any specific type of development besides the platform, we have simply personalised some areas. For us it was very important not to need more software than was already incorporated in the ERP, as we did not want to be dependent on any supplier, even a partner. In all the time we have been working with the Sage solution we have not needed more than a couple of special things.”

The advantages obtained


The principal objective that Maystar was seeking with the installation of Sage ERP X3 was to achieve adequate control of information. However, having started up the new application, the principal benefit that the company has obtained has been the availability of a very powerful analytical system, “which allows us to know the margins per article and per customer and from that point to take the most appropriate decisions for the enterprise. Obtaining reliable information rapidly and in real time. From an Access sheet anyone in the company can have the information online that they need, on stock, on orders to be filled, on production planning”, says Gabriel Giménez.

Another of the benefits that the company has obtained is in the form of dealing with despatches of products. “Before we worked with Sage ERP X3 we despatched them without barcode readings, without batch management, and this is where the company's way of working has changed most. Today all the products have to be received with data such as batch numbers and location in the warehouse, among others”, says Giménez.

The principal benefit, in the opinion of the Maystar financial director, resulting from the installation of this ERP has been, “the possibility for everyone in the company, independently of their area of work, to get the information they need to do their work immediately,

something that was not possible before, there was only one person in the whole organization who got out statistics once a month, so that on many occasions the information was not up-to-date and could not be used to take rapid decisions. Now, with Sage, we have information in real time in all areas of the business, on purchases, sales, stock, production, etc. This means that we can manage in a much more solvent way. The managers in the different areas can organise themselves for better control of their planning and orders sent for production, the situation of each order, so that planning is much easier”, Gabriel Giménez tells us.

Another benefit obtained by the company directly affects the sale force, so that now, thanks to Sage, they have the possibility of knowing on the spot their portfolio of orders and how they are situated, and can send delivery notes to the customer without the need to ring the central offices.

For Gabriel Giménez, “Sage enables us to have better control of information and this has led to a change in the whole organization, we have become addicts to information in real time and also we all now use the ERP. The earlier system was one-directional, we could only put in information, but we could not have it available, there was no exploitation of the information”.

Projects for the future


ERP X3 will allow Maystar to initiate various projects for the future which will contribute to improving the efficiency of the company's processes and the starting up of new functionalities, as Gabriel Giménez explains. “The CRM that we have been using for some time will, for example, allow all the sales force to put in their reports on visits, which will help us with control, and to have direct and up-to-date information on the exact situation with our customers, the history of the relationship with them, which will mean a change in the management of incidents. Another future project that we have in mind is linking the ERP with our webpage, to arrange an area for customers, where they can access their invoices, follow up their orders, and even send us their orders, not only for those who buy online but also for the company's traditional customers”.


Logo Sage

The Sage group is a world leader in the development, sale and marketing of business management software for small and medium enterprises and offers them the freedom to achieve success. Sage understands how and why each business is unique. We supply products and services which offer an answer to various needs and are easy to use, secure and efficient. The Sage group was founded in 1981, has been quoted on the London Stock Exchange since 1989 and became part of the FTSE 100 in 1999. Sage has more than 6 million customers and more than 13,500 employees in 24 countries, the United Kingdom and Ireland, continental Europe, North America, South Africa, Australia, Asia and Brazil.

For more information, visit www.sage.es

Logo Sage X3

Sage ERP X3 is the management solution for medium and large enterprises. With more than 10 years of experience worldwide, it is designed for enterprises with between 50 and 2,000 employees, offering solutions to the specific needs of multiple sectors of activity in manufacture, distribution and services. Sage ERP X3 is an international solution which is used every day by companies in more than 50 countries in the world, adapted to the local legislation and regulations. Its flexibility and adaptability in scale are critical for future success, more than 150,000 users have chosen Sage ERP X3 because it is easy to install, powerful in functionality and very competitive in cost.

For more information go into sageerpx3.sage.es