Company Name: Aerospacelab 

Location: Belgium, Europe

Industry: Manufacturing 

Established: 2018

Company Size: 250+

Odoo Users: 250+

Hosting Type: Odoo

Apps: Accounting, Purchase, Approvals, Inventory, Manufacturing, CRM, Quality, Maintenance, Time Off, Expenses, Helpdesk, Sales, Planning, Sign, Appraisals, Recruitment, Fleet, CMS, Project, Timesheets, etc. 

Founded in 2018, Aerospacelab has grown exponentially over the past few years, and now has offices spread across Europe and the USA. Specializing in satellite solutions including the overall infrastructure, its systems and operational services, the company delivers end-to-end tailored solutions to its customers worldwide. Facing rapid growth, Aerospacelab was looking for a management system able to keep up with this fast-paced rhythm. Odoo was exactly what they were looking for, that is, a modular and cost-effective software solution to deal with their operations and workflows.

With factories and offices in Europe (Belgium, France and Switzerland) and in the United States, Aerospacelab designs, manufactures and operates satellites. Since its founding in 2018, the company has been committed to democratizing access to space through cutting-edge innovation and scalable solutions. What does it look like in numbers? A production capacity of up to 600 satellites a year across its three factories.

From 2018 to 2022, Aerospacelab grew from 1 to 100 employees, and encountered several challenges dealing with daily operations, including: 

 Logistics around the rapid growth: Managing accounting, purchasing, inventory, and manufacturing processes became increasingly complex as Aerospacelab grew. 

 Collaboration between departments: It was key to ensure a streamlined and efficient approval process across various departments. 

 Vendor coordination: The company needed to coordinate multiple vendors while maintaining efficiency. 

 Customers, leads, and opportunities management: Establishing a structured and centralized system to manage customer relations from the very beginning. 

 Communication within the company: With four international branches and three factories, it is critical to facilitate seamless communication between the teams. 

 Overview of statistics: Aerospacelab needed to aggregate timesheets, budgets, costs, and revenues, for project and financial tracking. 

 Human resources system:  A centralized platform was needed to manage time-off requests, expenses, and performance appraisals. Moreover, being able to oversee recruitment, fleet management, and other HR tasks was important. 

 User experience: Managing support requests and electronic signature processes was something that needed to be worked on.

 Web platform: The goal was to build a scalable and user-friendly web platform.

As a rapidly growing startup, Aerospacelab needed an integrated, flexible, and scalable system to manage its core business functions efficiently. That’s why the company thoroughly investigated several systems, in order to find the one that would answer its requirements and needs. While SAP was considered as an ERP, its cost and projected ROI were not aligned with Aerospacelab’s needs. The final choice was set on Odoo, because of its modular and cost-effective approach.

Early on its journey, in 2022, Aerospacelab opted for Odoo as a central pillar of its operations, as the software has the ability to harmonize and optimize business processes under one roof. 

In order to take full control of the implementation and move quickly, the company chose to configure Odoo internally, assembling a dedicated in-house business analyst and developer team with strong expertise. 

First, the focus was on installing the standard modules, integrating existing data, and implementing small complementary features. Only after these foundational steps the dedicated team moved on to more extensive and long-term changes, requiring deeper business process analysis and definition. 

Improvements were pushed regularly through an agile methodology, allowing users to interact with new functionalities as early as possible. Continuous internal documentation was maintained to support new users and ensure smooth adoption. 

Regarding the scope of Odoo implementation, Aerospacelab proceeded in strategic phases: 

• Consolidating the foundations: Accounting, Purchase, Approvals, Inventory, and Manufacturing were initially integrated as the foundation. Access was limited to half of the employees, allowing for greater involvement and a smoother adoption process. 
• Installing the Customer Relationship Management system: CRM was then deployed to enhance lead tracking and customer engagement. 
• Managing and following-up on projects: Less than a year later, Odoo was extended to all employees as the main software to handle project activities, tasks, and timesheets. 
• Integrating additional applications: From then on, additional modules were progressively integrated to support the operations, including Quality, Maintenance, Time-off, Expense, Helpdesk, Sales, Planning, Sign, Appraisals, Recruitment, Fleet, and lately the CMS. 

Each phase was carried out with cross-functional collaboration to ensure alignment between business needs and system capabilities, and guaranteeing secure access to information.

Adopting an agile approach was key for Aerospacelab, to help the company get familiar with the new management system as well as to constantly make the modules evolve with the team’s needs. 

The company made sure to tackle some challenges, such as:

 Adoption and training: Teams needed onboarding to maximize the platform’s potential, which is why dedicated training sessions were organized.

 Scaling challenges: As Aerospacelab expanded, continuously adapting the Odoo setup was essential to accommodate growing operational demands.

 Security and usability balance: Balancing security and usability was crucial when defining access permissions. Granting excessive permissions could compromise data integrity, while overly restrictive access could hinder efficiency. At an early phase, the company brought everyone together to define, team by team, the required access permissions and developed a solution to maintain them.

As a fast-moving startup without pre-established procedures, Aerospacelab needed a system that could evolve alongside its processes. Odoo proved to be the ideal solution, enabling the company to refine workflows while uncovering inefficiencies across teams. 

“Integrating Odoo has enabled us to optimize workflows between more than 300 employees, within 4 international branches spread on 7 timezones” - Célia Berlemont - Senior Communication, Marketing, and PR Manager at Aerospacelab 

Choosing Odoo and making the most of the software offered some key benefits for the company, and its employees.

With Odoo, it is possible to adapt to evolving procedures, integrating initial process drafts before refining them into structured workflows. This flexibility is critical in bridging gaps across departments. 

Odoo also streamlined processes beyond the company’s initial expectations. Indeed, it improved and enforced global processes. But it also simplified product traceability, subcontracting and quality management. Helpdesk operations benefit from better responsiveness and issue resolution. Finally, content management is easier and enables a more structured digital presence.

By consolidating all major business flows into a single tool, Odoo streamlined operations. This ensures that employees can communicate easily and work efficiently without navigating multiple independent systems.

Instead of training employees on multiple small tools, Aerospacelab centralized everything within Odoo. Unified training sessions have therefore been conducted, ensuring faster onboarding and adoption across the company.

Odoo centralized key HR functions, including timesheets, leave requests, performance evaluations, reporting hierarchy, and expense tracking. This ensured employees had a single platform for all administrative tasks.

By leveraging Odoo’s CMS, the company streamlined website management while maintaining a unified infrastructure, making content updates and site enhancements more intuitive and scalable.

As Aerospacelab grew from 4 employees into over 300 in less than 7 years, Odoo’s solutions and the company’s dedicated in-house team adapted effortlessly to the evolving needs.

Odoo offers cross-functional visibility, which enhances decision making processes and collaboration. 

“Odoo’s flexibility, scalability, and efficiency make it a perfect fit for fast-growing tech companies such as Aerospacelab. Its ability to unify diverse business processes has been a game-changer for us and trust us... we have compared our options!” - Célia Berlemont - Senior Communication, Marketing, and PR Manager at Aerospacelab