Dickinson Frozen Foods Selects Dynamics NAV and eSoftware Professionals
The management team needed real-time access to the financial data and an improved quality control system
An interview with Brad Coleman, VP Quality Control & Innovation, DFF
Dickinson Frozen Foods (DFF) is the nation’s leading manufacturer and marketer of Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) processed onions and roasted potatoes. With locations in Fruitland and Sugar City, Idaho, DFF is also a market-leader in peppers, customized vegetable blends, and specialty potato products.
A growing business, increasing regulation by the FDA, growth to year round operations, and a need to consolidate information from multiple sites and systems led to a search for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) consultant.
The other vendors we evaluated simply showed us what their systems could do. eSoftware Professionals took the time to understand our business. We selected eSoftware Professionals as our ERP Consultant for their dedication to understanding and improving our business.
Brad Coleman, VP Quality Control & Innovation, DFF
The Challenge
Dickinson Frozen Foods had multiple legacy stand-alone accounting systems. Employees were constantly reconciling data, making duplicate entries, and wasting valuable time and effort. They didn’t trust the product availability, sales order, or production order data. No one was sure if they could really promise delivery of a product because they couldn’t trust the data.
DFF also lacked visibility to critical business management information including the actual P&L information by product and customer. The legacy systems provided only standard costs and the variance reports were only available on a monthly, aggregate basis, which were neither timely nor accurate.
Separate from the insufficient financial management tools, DFF also needed a system to simplify and improve the Quality Control process. The legacy Quality Control system was managed by hand using a conglomerate of hand entered Excel worksheets and Access databases, and was at risk of human error. The ability to track the product for recall is crucial not only to meet FDA requirements, but to continue DFF’s reputation as a trusted partner.
The Solution
Huge kudos to eSoftware Professionals for designing a new positive release Quality Assurance system, it helps us deliver the quality products that our customers depend on each and every day.
Brad Coleman, VP Quality Control & Innovation, DFF
eSoftware Professionals worked with DFF to implement Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system at each location. Financials and payroll were installed at the corporate office, followed by a rollout to each production facility. The new system offered several benefits including:
- Consolidated information previously spread across several systems
- Eliminated duplicate data entry
- Streamlined business processes
- Implemented a new, positive-release, Quality Control program
In addition the new solution provided instant access to the data needed to improve the business by all team members from management to sales and production teams, including:
- Up-to-date profit/loss by product, vendor, and customer
- Detailed reporting on transportation, storage, and other variable costs by product, vendor, and customer
- Instant access and visibility to product availability, sales orders, and production inventory
- Day-by-day variance reporting to identify and correct discrepancies when they happen
The Quality Control system has been upgraded to include traceability of the product down to the lot level. Product recalls can now be processed in minutes instead of hours. In addition, the fail-safe and positive release Quality Control system has a much higher level of reliability and consistency. In fact, DFF is happy to report that in the 10 months since implementation there have been no incidents where a product has shipped in error. They are confident in this new stringent quality control process and credit eSoftware Professionals with its success.
The NAV system includes a complete accounting and business management system which allows DFF to track product from the time it is dropped off by each vendor, where it is graded, sorted, sent to processing, then routed to the warehouse or shipped to a customer. Now DFF can also track actual business costs, assigning transportation, storage and other actual costs to each product allowing the team to identify and manage the top customers, vendors, and products. The team is freed up to be more effective, no longer required to spend their time reconciling multiple systems, and they can now spend more time selling product, assisting customers, analyzing the data, and improving the bottom line.
Why eSoftware Professionals and Microsoft Dynamics NAV
As DFF evaluated ERP systems the Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution scored high from all areas of the organization. The end users (sales and production) liked the Microsoft solution for its flexible system which could be customized to fit their specific job requirements. The Plant Manager liked Microsoft’s solution for the easy navigation and uncomplicated plant maintenance tools. The quality group also gave the Microsoft solution high scores for its quality management. eSoftware Professionals also received high marks for its dedication to DFF’s business goals and success.
eSoftware Professionals
This was a very successful ERP implementation. So successful, in fact, that DFF didn’t lose even one minute of production at either plant during launch.
Brad Coleman, VP Quality Control & Innovation, DFF
A Partner Who Knows Your Business Needs
eSoftware Professionals has helped companies run their businesses better since 1987. Here is how they helped DFF: by helping them consolidate data from multiple systems, improving quality control, better managing growth, and have better reporting, and forecasting. We use Microsoft Dynamics NAV to accomplish this. NAV, formerly known as Navision, is an ERP system that is scalable, flexible, low-risk, and can be customized for specific business needs.
eSoftware Professionals has offices in three states and is a Microsoft Gold Certified Enterprise Resource Planning partner. Our team consists of MBAs, CPAs, Professional Engineers, Project Management Professionals (PMP designation), and APICS trained CPIMs. Our expert team has the experience to help your business succeed.
