Koppert seeds transformation with Microsoft Dynamics 365. Case study.

For more than 50 years, the mission of Koppert has been to make agriculture and horticulture healthier, safer, more productive, and more sustainable, working in partnership with nature. Founded in 1967, the company has helped farmers and growers around the world maximise yields while reducing their environmental impact.

Koppert offers an integrated system of specialist knowledge and natural, safe solutions that improve crop health, resilience, and production. With 30 offices worldwide and operations in more than 100 countries, Koppert is leading this growing transformation.

“The world is changing. The company is changing. It’s good to have a solution that can deal with those changes. And it’s good to know we will never need a new ERP solution ever again”.

Harm Jan Westera: Corporate IT Manager

Before Dynamics 365

Most of the products that Koppert produces and ships are living organisms with a limited shelf life. There is no room for error in the supply chain—every hour matters. Further, serving markets with offices in 30 countries means business and compliance requirements can be complex and change rapidly. The company’s legacy Dynamics AX 2009 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system was highly customised, and still wasn’t meeting their needs.

Koppert understood that to fuel continued growth, they needed an IT platform that was agile, flexible, and scalable—an ERP system that could adapt as fast as the world changed. They also realised the value of the cloud and software-as-a-service. They decided to move from their old system to Dynamics 365 for finance, supply chain, and sales operations.

The implementation journey

Koppert realised that because implementing Dynamics 365 would have a major impact on all facets of the business, it should be managed as a business project with a strong IT component. An implementation team with representative stakeholders from across the business, including application experts, had the mandate to make decisions that presented a considerable impact on the enterprise. A steering committee consisting of board members and general managers of subsidiaries provided oversight.

Koppert learned that many of the customisations the old system had required were now standard capabilities of Dynamics 365. Of course, some customisation would be needed for specific processes, but this was used in moderation. Koppert also took the opportunity to revise its corporate chart of accounts. It is now the standard and the starting point of the local chart of accounts at their subsidiaries.

Koppert connected most business areas and integrated subsidiaries with the Dynamics 365 intercompany feature. Koppert implemented scanning with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to ease inventory traceability through the entire supply chain. Koppert also enabled containerisation to ensure proper packaging and shipping.

Koppert used Microsoft Logic Apps so that these integrations could be built for Dynamics 365 in the cloud. This provided a simple and effective way to integrate third-party services and applications into Dynamics 365.

Since this was a phased roll-out, the transactional data required for aggregate reporting was resident in both Dynamics 365 and the legacy system. The information would need to be available for reporting purposes for several years following go live. It didn’t make sense to bring the historical data into their fresh Dynamics 365 system since it was only needed for reporting. Koppert resolved this issue by transferring the data into one central data warehouse.

Work started in the Netherlands with implementing Dynamics 365 Sales in parallel with Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management. The strategy was to implement finance and supply chain capabilities first, and directly afterward implement sales. One Dynamics One Platform and dual-write capabilities would seamlessly maintain data synchronization, making real-time sales and customer information available to users. Now, communications with customers can be easily documented, and users have easy access to Outlook and mobile apps.

Winning change management

The Koppert implementation team chose to track and automate project activities using Microsoft Azure DevOps. They built a template to be used for each company roll-out, including tasks for each configuration and test, all linked to a user story where the process was described. This became the backbone for successful testing and decision-making on the readiness of the company to live.

Best practices are making each implementation and roll-out more streamlined. Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, and Sales are now template projects, with additions for local and regulatory requirements specific to each country. As of this publication date, approximately 60 percent of the implementations are complete, with final project completion scheduled for Q2 2024.

Benefits and impacts

1. With Dynamics 365, Koppert has an agile, flexible, and scalable ERP system that can adjust quickly to a changing world—and a quickly growing organisation. Koppert has standardised processes from the initial sales order intake through packaging and delivery of their live product.
2. Enhanced communications. Employees and management now have instant access to real-time consolidated data, documents, and reports to enable better decision-making. The use of scanners ensures inventory is up-to-date, and workspaces and mobile devices provide insight into the status of all relevant processes.
3. Foundation for growth. The company now has the foundation to easily scale increases in users, transactions, and workloads.
4. Quick onboarding. Dynamics 365 provides a friendly, easy to use, modern user interface so users are up and running in no time, and existing users gain valuable insights with workspaces and mobile devices.
5. Optimising intercompany orders. Dynamics 365 intercompany processing is used extensively at Koppert. Most business areas are connected and trade with each other, and subsidiaries are integrated using intercompany functionality. Koppert headquarters estimates that today 28 percent of sales orders are transacted through the Dynamics 365 intercompany feature.
6. Supply chain conformance. Production is managed through Dynamics 365 and completed orders are released to the warehouse for processing. Koppert uses batch tracking for traceability throughout the entire supply chain.

Better customer insights, better service. With Dynamics 365, Koppert is using the dual-write feature to enable real-time data synchronisation of customer information, including sales orders and invoices. Instead of emails and spreadsheets to track customer interactions, users have a 360-degree view of customers. This enables greater insight and communication between departments to provide better service to existing customers and more quickly convert leads into new customers. 

As Koppert continues to eye potential efficiencies, they acknowledge the efficiency of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and managing their infrastructure in the cloud. “The world is changing. The company is changing. It’s good to have a solution that can deal with those changes,” he said. “And it’s good to know we will never need a completely new ERP solution ever again.”

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