Microsoft System Upgrades Deliver Process Efficiency for Leading Fruit Packaging Manufacturer

Technologies:

• ERP: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
• Inventory Management: Lanham Demand Planning
• CRM: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (Sales and Customer Service modules)
• Customer portal: Microsoft Power Pages

Customer wins:

• Fully integrated cloud-based Microsoft stack
• Business activity has materially increased
• Empowered Hawk customers
• Single source of truth
• Improved visibility and reporting across the entire organisation

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Hawk Group is a leading manufacturer of moulded fibre packaging for the apple industry. Hawk Technology, its new fast-growing sister company, manufactures automated fruit packaging machinery. Hawk prides itself on empowering its customers and using technology to support this goal. Mike Sanko, Chief Financial Officer at Hawk, comments:

“We’re thinking about our customers all the time. How can we speed up processes and make day-to-day life easier for them?”

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Kelly Fenwick, Chief Operating Officer at Hawk, shares the Hawk ethos:

“We want our customers to receive more than just ‘trays at the door’; they deserve a wraparound service to support their entire business. Technology upgrades are a fundamental part of this.”  

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Choosing Theta

Having worked alongside Theta for several years, Hawk was happy to continue the partnership, as Mike explains:

“Theta knows our business, and building up this industry knowledge takes a while. We’ve always had a good experience with Theta, with no major performance issues, and there’s a solid team running our account.”

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Project overview

Several systems were identified for upgrades and improvements:

1. ERP – from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central cloud.
2. CRM – from spreadsheets to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (Sales and Customer Service modules).
3. Web portal – from a simple web page to Microsoft Power Pages.

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1. ERP upgrade

Hawk was operating with an on-premises legacy 2013 version of Dynamics NAV, which had become outdated, out of Microsoft support and no longer had the required functionality as the business evolved. With rising costs and hardware coming to the end of life, they opted to upgrade to the more secure and supported cloud ERP – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The new cloud-based solution would also enable them to access new apps to fine-tune the system to their liking. Mike Sanko shares why they stayed with Microsoft Dynamics:

“We’re a Microsoft shop and always have been. We like to take off-the-shelf solutions that are well supported and easy to customise.”

The new system provides robust scanning solutions, consignment inventory, warehousing, and manufacturing, and costs can be easily tracked with standard cost accounting.

Although moving from NAV to Business Central was fairly intuitive, the Hawk team also received training to fully understand the system’s new capabilities.

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Customising the system with ‘just in time’ inventory management

In addition to setting up Dynamics 365 Business Central to suit the day-to-day business activities, Hawk is in the process of implementing powerful demand planning functionality using Lanham Demand Planning.

Demand planning is crucial in the fruit-growing industry, as there are high variations in apple and crop size (therefore, packaging requirements). Supply is typically front-end heavy, which tails off as the crop is harvested and packed.

With Lanham Demand Planning, Hawk can easily ensure its customers have the optimal level of packaging needed throughout the entire season. Ultimately, it will save costs and ‘real estate’ for their customers – without relying on someone manually calculating the inventory fluctuations. It minimises leftover stock at the end of the season and saves time moving packaging between different customers.

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2. CRM upgrade

Hawk transitioned from spreadsheets to Microsoft CRM (Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement – Sales and Customer Service modules).

This new system provides a centralised hub for managing customer contracts, supply agreements, communications, and other critical information. Hawk teams can easily access and share this data.

Additionally, the CRM integrates seamlessly with their existing systems, offering a comprehensive view of customer activity. The mobile app provides convenient access for Hawk employees – even when they’re not at their desks.

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3. New web portal

Through a new mobile-accessible web portal, customers can scan trays as they use them and track total usage and stock reports independently. The portal seamlessly integrates with both CRM and Dynamics 365 Business Central, making management easy for Hawk. As a result, Hawk is experiencing increased efficiency from this streamlined technology stack. Mike elaborates:

“We’ve eliminated the temptation to do things manually. Our Service Manager used to key in thousands of pallet numbers, and now it’s all automated. It’s much quicker and has been a big win for us.”

Kelly adds:

“Customers can log in to a portal and see all their transactions in one place. It’s a single source of truth.”

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Outcome

The technology upgrades have meant Hawk can keep pace with growing demand and continue empowering its customers. Mike estimates the time savings:

“The business activity at Hawk has materially increased, with no extra admin staff. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from our customers.”

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On the horizon

Hawk Technology, Hawk Group’s sister company, is getting increasingly busier, with growers seeking automated food packaging manufacturing solutions. With some of these machines comprising thousands of parts, manually managing this inventory via spreadsheets has been challenging. The next step for Hawk Technology is to implement the inventory management solution within Dynamics 365 Business Central:

“We’ve got some clever people. What they’re currently doing is nothing short of remarkable. We want to support them with a solution to help them maintain good control over the entire inventory stock.”

Hawk is also excited to get Lanham Demand Planning fully embedded into the organisation, which will be a huge win for matching production with customer demand.

Also being rolled out is expense management, which will streamline this process and bring more efficiency to the business.