Sana Commerce, a global leader in B2B e-commerce platforms, has announced that leading Sydney wholesaler, Food & Dairy Co, has gone live with the Sana Commerce ERP integrated B2B e-commerce platform.
Last year, Sana Commerce designed and deployed a new B2B online ordering portal for the leading food and beverage provider. A family-owned Australian company, Food & Dairy Co supplies produce to restaurants and cafes across the Sydney region.
The new ordering infrastructure has led to 82% of clients placing their orders online and a drop of 75% in the number of customer support calls.
Daniel Wickman, CFO at Food & Dairy Co, said the strong growth experienced by the company during the past few years had put increasing pressure on the company’s order-taking processes.
“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 and this was becoming unsustainable.”
A new order-processing platform
To overcome this challenge, in 2021a decision was taken to deploy a more modern ERP system together with a B2B e-commerce platform that would be intuitive and accessible to both staff and customers.
“We decided 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.”
After reviewing a range of alternatives, a decision was taken to deploy Microsoft Business Central and Sana Commerce.
Significant business benefits
Once the new ordering platform was up and running, Food & Dairy Co found it was quickly enjoying some sizable business benefits. Wickman said one of the most significant was the ability for customer service agents to spend more time in quality interactions with clients rather than simply taking product orders.
“We also quickly found that staff were wasting less time because of the improved workflows that are now in place,” said Wickman.
“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 as a result of the project.”
Wickmansaid the new integrated platform also assisted the company with a shift to remote working.
“Prior to working on a cloud-based system, working from home meant having to remotely access the company server using independent software,” said Wickman.
“By shifting to Sana Commerce and Business Central, not only was the entire team able to enjoy the flexibility of remote work, even after the pandemic, it also meant they were able to work through the pandemic without being disrupted.”
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 a relevant source of truth about customers and their interactions.
Another significant benefit delivered by the new ordering platform has been the way it has made it easier for customers to explore the entire product range before placing an order.
“The idea was to get the customers browsing and seeing our range,” said Wickman. “We’ve got 400 SKUs and we’ve probably got about 70 of them that everybody buys that are really popular. This number is now increasing.”
Lessons learned
Wickmansaid that, while the Sana Commerce and Business Central deployment went smoothly, some relevant lessons were still learned during the process. The first was that up-front planning is very important as it ensures the new technology will fully meet business requirements.
“It’s 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.”
Wickman said Food & Dairy Co planned to continue to look for innovative ways in which the new Sana Commerce platform can be extended and enhanced in coming months.
“We are confident we now have a scalable and flexible platform that can support our on-going growth,” said Wickman. “Thanks to Sana Commerce, we are able to continue to improve our levels of customer service.”