From the Heart of Chicago, Illinois, the Anthony Marano Company Distributes Produce To

Microsoft Dynamics Customer Solution Case Study

Major Produce Distributor Drives Agility with Flexible ERP Solution

Overview “In terms of the IT agility it provides us, Microsoft Country or Region: United States Dynamics AX is simply unmatched by the other ERP Industry: Wholesale and distribution— Consumer goods distribution packages out there.”

Customer Profile Chris Nowak, Chief Technology Officer, Anthony Marano Company Based in Chicago, the Anthony Marano Company has 300 employees and is the largest produce distributor in the The Anthony Marano Company is a major produce distributor Midwest. based in Chicago, Illinois. The company prides itself on its ability

Business Situation to provide same-day delivery and works hard to maintain a The Anthony Marano Company wanted streamlined operation both through technology and process to improve purchase order processing, including landed-costs settlements, and improvements. Most recently, the company deployed Microsoft automate bank reconciliation. Dynamics AX for its robust development environment, enabling

Solution the Anthony Marano Company to support an agile business. By The company deployed Microsoft using the new solution, the company has implemented Dynamics AX for its robust development environment that would ease continuous business improvements, most notably the capability customization. to calculate landed costs and automate bank reconciliation, both

Benefits of which have led to significant improvements in productivity Streamline deployment and business insight. With Microsoft Dynamics AX in place, the Improve business insight and vendor relations Anthony Marano Company has continued on a path of Reduce manual effort, improve manageable growth, bringing new enhancements to its business productivity Ease IT administration without increasing overhead costs. Support growth

Situation improvement projects and areas of From the heart of Chicago, Illinois, the functionality into production, tested those Anthony Marano Company distributes changes with employees, and implemented produce to retailers in the surrounding ongoing improvements both at a Chicago metropolitan area and parts of technology and process level. To help in Wisconsin and Indiana. The company has the implementation of major technology approximately 300 employees and is the deployments and initiatives while keeping largest full-line produce distributor in the its IT team lean, the company relies on Midwest, with more than 400,000 square experts from Microsoft Services for feet of fresh produce in its facility. In the strategy, planning, design, deployment, and highly competitive produce distribution implementation support and a few, select market, the Anthony Marano Company Microsoft partners. Driving its most recent differentiates itself from its competitors by string of IT projects, the company identified its ability to deliver produce on the same two major areas for improvement in 2009, day a customer orders it. which included: Streamlining purchase order processing Providing same-day delivery has required and landed-cost settlements. Because the Anthony Marano Company to maintain the price of produce fluctuates with the a highly responsive and efficient operation. market, the Anthony Marano Company Currently, the company handles a couple must be able to adjust the cost of goods thousand invoices a day and receives, at a sold on a purchase order after the conservative estimate, around 600 company makes a sale. In the past, truckloads of produce a month. To grow to adjusting the cost required multiple this point, the company has taken screens and happened in batches. And advantage of the latest technology to help because the process was manual and ensure that it can maintain its high-quality labor-intensive, it was prone to error, services while keeping administrative requiring staff to run a report afterwards overhead under control. Working with the to double-check their work. company since 1996, Chris Nowak, Chief Automating bank reconciliation. To keep Technology Officer of the Anthony Marano administrative overhead down following Company, recalls the company’s evolving IT ongoing growth, the Anthony Marano environment. “When I first started, we Company needed to be able to relied on a highly customized accounting automatically import an electronic bank solution that had become impossible for us statement file into its business to customize and support, so we made the management system to automatically decision to go with a packaged solution in clear and reconcile outstanding checks. 1998 and used that until 2009,” he says. With its prior system, a task like this required clerical staff to perform data During this time, Nowak and his IT team entry. made Microsoft products and technologies a major part of the IT strategy and followed Solution a virtuous cycle development strategy At the same time that the Anthony Marano wherein they rolled out small IT Company looked to bring further

37 capabilities to its employees, Microsoft Although landed-cost settlement and bank released Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. reconciliation capabilities were top-of- Although the solution included a full range mind, the Anthony Marano Company of enterprise resource planning (ERP) understood that it would first need to get capabilities, it also boasted a robust up and running. To deploy the solution, development environment. “With Microsoft Nowak and his IT team of only three Dynamics AX, we get an object-oriented worked closely with Microsoft Services solution, are able to code in X++ by using experts to perform architecture, design, Microsoft Visual Studio, and can use Visual development, data migration, and Studio Team Foundation Server to provide performance reviews and to reduce the risk a stable, multideveloper environment to of deployment by taking advantage of support our virtuous cycle development implementation best practices. “When you strategy,” says Nowak. “In terms of the IT undergo a project like this, you want to agility it provides us, Microsoft Dynamics know you are getting the right software AX is simply unmatched by the other ERP through the right vendor,” says Nowak. “By packages out there.” choosing Microsoft Dynamics AX and working with Microsoft Services, I had Implementation and System Overview complete confidence that the project would be a success.” The teams deployed the General Ledger, Bank, Accounts Receivable, Sales Orders, Accounts Payable, Purchasing, and Inventory modules. As part of this effort, the teams also migrated a year’s worth of purchase order transactional data and master data to Microsoft Dynamics AX. Incorporating the solution into the company’s overall business management platform, the teams also integrated the Accounts Payable, Purchasing, Accounts Receivable, and Sales Orders modules with a legacy warehouse management system and legacy transportation system. Currently, 20 people in accounting use Microsoft Dynamics AX. To meet the Anthony Marano Company’s most recent requirements, the teams also worked to deliver the following customizations: Lot settlement screen. Through a modified purchase order screen, as seen in Figure 1, employees can now account for landed costs, including material costs as well as landed third-party

47 miscellaneous charges, for produce as helping ensure the success of the project. soon as it arrives. Employees can then In addition to sharing deployment update costs as they change, even after methodologies, the team from Microsoft the inventory has been sold. “Every time acted as an extension of Anthony Marano we make a change to the price of a Company’s organization, providing high- product, it’s changing our general ledger, quality implementation, application updating our profit and loss, and customization, and project management changing our month-end revenue services. Because of this, the Anthony numbers,” says Nowak. Marano Company benefited from proven Bank reconciliation automation. best practices, increased capacity, lower Microsoft Dynamics AX automatically risk, and the flexibility to respond to the imports bank statement files and changing needs of its industry. Says Nowak, automatically clears and reconciles “Microsoft Services brought a deep outstanding checks. knowledge to the implementation that enabled us to ease the implementation and With core ERP functionality and meet our needs for very-specific customizations in place, the Anthony customizations, all while lowering the risk Marano Company is now implementing of such an initiative.” additional areas of functionality, including the add-on solution Positive Pay. In future Improve Business Insight and work, the company aims to take full Vendor Relations advantage of electronic data interchange to With landed costs updated regularly, the enhance its ability to negotiate prices and Anthony Marano Company now has insight quantities with vendors and retailers alike. into how the business is doing at any given moment, leading to faster decision making Benefits and improved vendor relations. Says As the Anthony Marano Company Nowak, “As soon as we pay for a lot, we continues to grow, the company has the have a complete profit and loss for that flexible platform that it needs to drive purchase. It’s the decision point that our ongoing improvements and changes now department heads use as they are selling and in the future. Says Nowak, “In addition the next load of produce. And now we’re to the agility it has provided our business, capturing more information than ever the best part of Microsoft Dynamics AX is before, and it’s all broken down by vendor that it’s an enterprise-ready product from and check number, providing us with a Microsoft. We know that the product and more encompassing picture of the the support for it will be available now and business.” in the future.” Adds Nowak, “Now, we can provide our Streamline Deployment vendors with a more thorough and up-to- To ease the implementation of Anthony date lot sheet report that shows them how Marano Company’s financial management well we did in selling their products. And solution, an experienced team from we can now settle our finances with them a Microsoft Services dedicated itself to

57 couple days faster, greatly improving our Support Growth relationship with them.” With an agile IT environment, the Anthony Marano Company continues to bring new Reduce Manual Effort, functionality to production. “As we have Improve Productivity grown over the years, Microsoft By eliminating much of the need for technologies have been there to support manual data entry, the bank reconciliation us,” says Nowak. “The addition of Microsoft and lot settlement customizations have Dynamics AX to our business lets us both led to major improvements in approach the future with even more productivity. Says Nowak, “Thanks to the confidence, knowing that we have the IT efficiencies we gained by implementing infrastructure in place to support us. For Microsoft Dynamics AX and the example, as food safety guidelines become customizations we made, we have avoided increasingly stringent, we know that adding office personnel as our business Microsoft Dynamics AX has the robustness grows. In fact, we have been able to move and flexibility to help us meet changing staff from data entry to sales support.” compliance and reporting guidelines.”

Ease IT Administration Additional Resources With Microsoft Dynamics AX in place, the Read more about Microsoft Dynamics for company continues to maintain a lean IT the food and beverage distribution team of only three employees. “Being able industry. to bring in Microsoft Services and partners Download a fact sheet on Microsoft when we have a specific need has enabled Dynamics AX. us to keep our IT team small and simply See Microsoft Dynamics AX in action. maintain the solution by using Visual Studio and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server,” says Nowak. “With all these tools available to our team and a solid partnership strategy in place, our responsiveness to new requests from the business is usually very quick.”

67 Microsoft Dynamics Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.

For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to: www.microsoft.com/dynamics