Key Results & Highlights
- Fully integrated Odoo ERP tailored to complex automotive variant management
- Complete consolidation of product data from multiple legacy systems
- Successful migration of 120,000+ products and critical historical data
- Robust synchronization with WooCommerce via EPT plugin
- Streamlined logistics through new workflows (“Buy & Ship,” “Ship from stock”)
- Automated customer communication with professional email templates
- On-time, no-downtime go-live within the strict 3-month window
- High-performance hosting enabling fast updates, bug fixes, and scalability
- Enhanced staff visibility into order statuses and improved communication
- One centralized operational hub acting as a true headless commerce solution
The Company
4x4 Works is Europe’s leading 4WD upgrade specialist and the UK’s largest importer and supplier of premium off-road components. With a catalog of thousands of high-quality parts, they serve everyone from overland enthusiasts to emergency services. Their platform focuses on expert guidance, fast delivery, and exceptional customer service that consistently earns praise from their clients.
The Challenge
4x4 Works needed an enterprise resource planning system capable of supporting rapid growth while handling a highly complex product catalog of approximately 100,000 unique items. The company faced challenges in consolidating disparate data, managing intricate inventory and variants, and streamlining custom sales processes. Adding to the complexity, legacy data had to be migrated within a strict three-month window, with zero tolerance for parallel processing, requiring a fully bespoke Odoo structure from day one.
Complex Product Catalog & Inventory Management
A primary obstacle was the immense scale and complexity of their product catalog, which included an estimated one hundred thousand unique products. This required consolidating extensive data from multiple disparate lists and systems into a single, unified source of truth. The challenge was compounded by the need to meticulously manage inventory, distinguishing between proprietary and supplier parts and tracking numerous variants to synchronize their web store with supplier data.
Custom Sales & Service Delivery
Service delivery presented another layer of complexity, particularly in managing intricate, custom-tailored sales like suspension kits. These sales involved lengthy design and consultation phases, causing orders to remain in a processing state for extended periods. This highlighted the need for improved internal workflows, a robust notification system, and streamlined customer communication. Logistical challenges required a system capable of managing parts moving from anywhere to anywhere.
Technical & Temporal Constraints
The project faced significant technical and temporal constraints. We had to migrate legacy data, within a very short, three-month window each year when their order flow permitted a system change. The strict requirement to avoid parallel processing meant the new system had to go live with the new data source immediately, necessitating a bespoke Odoo data structure from the outset to handle their unique variant management and foreign part number requirements.
The Solution
We designed a structured, timeline-driven Odoo rollout tailored to 4x4 Works’ complex catalog and operational needs. The solution combined deep business analysis, advanced data modeling, custom development, and seamless Ecommerce integration.
Implementation Steps
- Conducted in-depth business and process analysis
- Executed large-scale data cleaning, unification, and migration
- Built a custom Odoo module with fields for make, model, series, and VIN
- Performed two major data migrations: 120,000+ products + all essential legacy data
- Implemented WooCommerce integration with the EPT plugin
- Optimized logistical workflows (“Buy & Ship,” “Ship from stock”)
- Integrated advanced stock management and payment modules
- Created automated customer communication workflows with email templates
- Delivered detailed pre-launch staff training
- Achieved on-time go-live with no parallel system usage
- Provided intensive post-launch support and continuous optimization
The Impact
The Odoo implementation gave 4x4 Works a modern, scalable operational foundation capable of supporting its leadership in the European 4WD market. Their once-complex processes are now unified within a single source of truth, transforming operational challenges into streamlined workflows.
Staff now have clear visibility into order statuses, enabling timely updates and better client communication. Internal collaboration improved significantly, while logistics and stock management became more efficient.
The high-performance hosting environment enables agile maintenance, faster deployments, and stronger reporting—empowering strategic decision-making. With this new infrastructure, 4x4 Works is positioned to grow confidently, expand its offerings, and strengthen its dominance in the 4WD market.
The Final Word
"Octic are helpful, professional, highly skilled and have a can-do attitude. Their support and patience helped us to implement a comprehensive management approach for a huge volume of back-end data and to develop a system which streamlined our workflow . Thanks to Octic, Odoo has enabled us to effectively manage a significant customer base and to better meet our customers’ needs."