Food and dairy supplier Food & Dairy Co says more than 80 per cent of customers have moved to online ordering since launching its Sana Commerce ERP integrated B2B ecommerce platform.
Food & Dairy Co CFO Daniel Wickman said strong growth in recent years had put pressure on the company’s ordering processes. The family-owned business supplies restaurants and cafes across Sydney.
The project was a year in the making and has resulted in 82 per cent of customers placing their orders online, and a 75 per cent drop in customer support calls.
“Our customers tend to assess their stock needs after they close each evening,” said Wickman. “This meant our staff had to process anywhere between 600 and 700 orders in a two-hour period, which was unsustainable.”
“We needed to move to an online-ordering system to streamline the processes and reduce the work burden on staff,” said Wickman. “We turned to our technology partner Microchannel for assistance and guidance.”
The decision was made to deploy Microsoft Business Central and Sana Commerce, an ERP system and B2B ecommerce platform that was more intuitive and accessible for staff and customers, with.
Once the ordering platform was operational, Wickman said the benefits were almost immediate, with customer service agents able to spend more time in in quality interactions with clients rather than simply taking product orders.
“Although the initial implementation meant some customers required more onboarding than others, the end result meant the customer service team went from processing 500 orders in a day to only 120 per day,” he said.
Greater accessibility
The new integrated platform also helped the company with remote working requirements.
“Prior to working on a cloud-based system, working from home meant having to remotely access the company server using independent software,” said Wickman.
Sana Commerce and Business Central enabled the entire workforce to work from home during the pandemic, with minimal disruption to the business, and flexibility as restrictions eased.
The new platform has also improved the quality of data across the company. Agents know they can use information in Sana Commerce that will always be up-to-date and relevant about customers and their interactions.
Another significant benefit from the new ordering platform has been how much easier it is for customers to explore the entire product range before placing an order, Wickman said.
“The idea was to get the customers browsing and seeing our range,” says Wickman. “We’ve got 400 SKUs and about 70 of them are really popular. This number is now increasing.”
Lessons learned
Wickman said that, while the Sana Commerce and Business Central deployment went smoothly, there were lessons learnt along the way.
The first was that up-front planning is very important as it ensures the new technology will fully meet business requirements.
“It also important not to rush the rollout,” said Wickman. “It’s natural to be deeply invested in the outcome of a project like this, but it is vital to give the IT team as much time as required to complete the process.”
“We are confident we now have a scalable and flexible platform that can support our ongoing growth,” said Wickman.
