All data directly available to SanoRice

To collaborate efficiently with colleagues, it is essential to share information in a central place. It prevents duplication of work and improves mutual communication. Rice wafer producer SanoRice therefore switched to Dynamics 365.

For a growing organization with 500 employees and production locations in three countries, up-to-date insight into customer contacts and project administration is of business-critical importance. Particularly if, like SanoRice, you deal with the dynamics of the international food industry.

SanoRice was founded thirty years ago in Veenendaal and has grown into the world's largest private label producer of puffed rice, corn and multigrain waffles. The family business, which has branches outside the Netherlands in Zottegem (Belgium) and Borgo Vercelli (Italy), sells its products to premium brands, retailers and distributors in more than forty countries.

Loss of knowledge

The rapid growth led to the emergence of different working methods within the company. Depending on the location or employee, communication and appointments were recorded in Outlook, Excel and notebooks. There was no complete overview of customer information, as well as a central place where the status of prospects and projects could be consulted. A lot of time was therefore lost in finding out the correct information about customers and projects. And that while the amount of information in the food sector is increasing at a rapid pace.

Not sharing or storing information consistently is not without consequences. In the short term, this can mean that projects are left behind because there is insufficient data available. In the longer term, knowledge can even be lost due to the departure of staff.

SanoRice therefore called on Cegeka. “We worked with Office 365 and for the financial administration we used Dynamics Business Central and NAV. We therefore preferred a solution from Microsoft,” says Arend van Doorn, CFO of SanoRice.

On Cegeka's advice, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and SharePoint were chosen. Dynamics 365 is an innovative, cloud-based platform that provides companies with up-to-date data and insights to make informed decisions. SharePoint, in turn, allows employees to share documents and work in them simultaneously.

Cegeka's consultants took care of the integration to SharePoint and the synchronization between customer data in Business Central/NAV and Dynamics 365. "The implementation phase was preceded by a close collaboration process to clarify the challenges together," says Rob Ockers, Business Architect at Cegeka. . “We think that close cooperation is important, because you won't get results if you don't know the customer up close. Because of the corona virus, this took shape in online workshops, demos and alignment sessions via Teams.”

In the new situation, all SanoRice employees have insight into involvement in projects, what the progress is and what communication has been with customers.

Facilitate growth and innovation

“The collaboration between went very well,” says Rob Ockers. “As an ambitious organization, SanoRice knows well where it stands and where it wants to go. That helped a lot with the implementation. For a fast-growing company in the international food industry, Dynamics 365 is the perfect solution. It offers all the possibilities and tools to facilitate innovation and further growth.”

Dynamics 365 has been live at SanoRive since the beginning of October 2020. Van Doorn is 'very satisfied' with the progress of the process and the design of the platform. “The benefits of this package are obvious and we look forward to steering based on the available data in Dynamics 365. In 2021 we want to look at further refinements and applications to optimize the system.”

For now, the focus is on adoption within the organization: familiarizing employees with the system and encouraging use. SanoRice gives itself a few months for this. “If it cannot be found in Dynamics 365 on January 1, then it does not exist,” Van Doorn concludes with a laugh.

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