Ballance Agri-Nutrients is the leading fertilizer manufacturer in New Zealand. The company wanted to improve the performance of its critical SAP applications to better serve customers. To do that, Ballance migrated its database to Microsoft SQL Server 2012, greatly improving application performance. Employees are more productive, and the company has cut storage costs by 60 percent. Also, Ballance can better handle business growth.

Retail Solutions, a leading global provider of software-as-a- service (SaaS) products, strives to improve profitability for its major customers, so it implemented an interactive business intelligence (BI) solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. Major suppliers and retailers worldwide use the solution to gain millions of dollars in ROI through increased sales and better supply-chain management. In addition, Retail Solutions is expanding its business 40 percent annually by taking advantage of a Microsoft platform.

Solutions provider Manhattan Associates wanted to reap business rewards from social networking by combining Yammer social functionality with Microsoft SharePoint. It now enjoys collaboration that transcends organizational and geographical silos and a mobile workforce that taps into corporate “tribal knowledge” anytime, anywhere. Savvy knowledge management means successes are replicated, significantly boosting productivity and the bottom line.

Ithaca Agway and True Value managed their business with Epicor Eagle POS Software and struggled with high costs associated with that system. They were also bogged down with paper orders and didn’t have real-time insight on whether they could make a sale and couldn’t predict when items were available. With their Epicor solution, they were not able to price compare products across their multiple suppliers and were never really sure if they were getting the best price. Ithaca Agway and True Value worked with System Solutions LLC to implement Microsoft Dynamics RMS and is now realizing a 20-25% increase in efficiency with mobile devices in receiving, improving profitability with the use of suggested orders, enhancing customer service with real-time insight into inventory and a streamlined check out process, and making way for growth with plans for a new store in Lansing, New York.

Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc., a specialty retailer of beauty supply products based in Denton, Texas, faced a tangled mess in dealing with international product and service management. CIO Chad Ehmke discusses this competitive environment and how Microsoft Dynamics helps the company manage their business operations, which last year generated $3.3 billion in sales across more than 16,000 SKUs.

Insphere Insurance Solutions, one of the nation’s largest independent, career-agent distribution groups, serves small businesses and the middle-income individual market and aims to be the leading distribution channel for each of its strategic carrier partners. Aiming to double the size of its sales field over the next few years, Insphere wanted to streamline its career-agent experience. To do so, the company implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM and then worked with Pariveda Solutions to build a fully integrated, cross-platform mobile application. With this efficient field-selling environment in place, Insphere now drives more productive agent activities and gives managers greater visibility into those activities. Insphere believes that the unified software environment has become a key component of the company’s value proposition for retaining and recruiting agents.

A Home and Hardware retail chain in Alabama struggled with manual transactions at each of their three locations, inflexible pricing capabilities, and little insight into their inventory and supplier information. They partnered up with Microsoft Dynamics® RMS Partner out of Connecticut, System Solutions, LLC. in order to streamline their operations and gain more visibility into their business.

Expects 5-7 Percent Profit After Tax (PAT) Dodla Dairy, a leading dairy and dairy products company, managed its business on a bespoke ERP solution. Over time, the limitations of a standalone application posed a threat to growth and risked non-compliance with government regulations. Wanting to integrate its operations on a common platform, Dodla partnered with Affordable Business Solutions to implement Microsoft Dynamics™ AX 4.0, later upgraded to Dynamics 2009. The solution improved the internal controls of the company by automating business and functional processes. Integrated operations, real time collection-distribution information from multiple sites, and improved communication assisted in sales planning. Dodla increased sales, financial transparency and is able to meet all regulatory compliance requirements. All these factors helped improve the overall efficiency and growth plans.

Lantmännen is one of the largest groups in the agriculture, machinery, energy, and food industries in the Nordic region. In 2006, Lantmännen implemented IBM Lotus Notes as its first central mail service. It later switched to a Microsoft unified communications solution, but as the company grew, it found that its costs for storage, backups, and administration were increasing rapidly. Lantmännen wanted to find a way to provide consistent communications services for its employees without incurring additional costs, so it decided to transition to Microsoft Office 365, which combines the familiar Office desktop with the next generation of cloud-based communication and collaboration services. By using Office 365, Lantmännen found that it could reduce costs and administration while also providing the latest capabilities to help its employees communicate more effectively.

Public-listed Xpress Holdings Ltd (Xpress), Singapore’s leading printing company, wanted to eliminate process bottlenecks and enhance management visibility with an integrated system. With Microsoft Dynamics, Xpress enjoyed 100 percent time-savings with quote generation, streamlined invoicing process, enhanced inventory management, and increased management control and visibility.