With extensive background in building materials, the Bay family of companies (Bay) produces and distributes commercial and industrial, fabricated, and metal building insulation products to the construction industry. Headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Bay prides itself on outstanding customer service and providing the products and expertise needed to meet the needs of its customers. Bay has 75 locations throughout the United States operating from 40 corporations.
Situation
Bay was technically challenged with an old, unsupported system not built to handle the volume, growth, or acquisition of its many business divisions and geographic locations. Sales processes and functions across all its divisions desperately needed streamlining, along with reliability, continuity, and ease of use. Because of the nature of construction, some of Bay’s estimation processes were extremely complicated, custom purchase orders were common, and manual entries were frequent, all key challenges a new system had to address.
Strategy
Wipfli’s longstanding service relationship with Bay led to the Microsoft Dynamics® AX solution. Wipfli’s expertise in the solution, along with its understanding of Bay’s business units, allowed the team to pursue creative implementation to best suit the client. The right tools were introduced to enhance business processes while converting one division at a time without the need for total reimplementation each time. Also provided were good out-of-the-box tools to ensure security, another key objective for Bay. As part of the overall process, the Wipfli team:
- Streamlined sales functionalities by eliminating nonessential data from view and maintaining relevant information to simplify the user experience.
- Implemented a sales tax solution to automatically calculate and apply sales taxes across various states.
- Ensured product order integration.
- Implemented electronic invoicing to eliminate mailing of roughly 250,000 annual invoices.
- Implemented electronic document handling to allow online storage and searches.
Benefits
Bay has enjoyed increased efficiencies in all its divisions and at its headquarters. Accessibility to information has greatly improved across its businesses, with general ledger, vendor, and customer information easily shared. Overall order accuracy has improved, and the company processes and releases orders much faster, which translates into greater profitability. Additional time and cost savings have been realized because of productivities gained from eliminating a host of manual processes. Because more documents and processes are handled electronically, the company regained office space earmarked for filing cabinets while saving monthly mailing expenses. The company also gained better reporting abilities, allowing it to perform ad hoc inquiries and get real-time insights.
