Fresh Mark optimizes operations and improves performance with Dynamics 365

A dated system slowed operations

While Fresh Mark prides itself on its people, products, and processes, supporting it all is computer technology. Fresh Mark’s finance, manufacturing, and logistics departments used Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for accounting operations and procurement and Red Prairie for warehouse and transportation management, all highly customized and some running on Microsoft Windows Server 2008, which was out of support.

Fresh Mark’s meat manufacturing process and testing procedures operate 24 hours a day, six to seven days a week. Any disruption can potentially jeopardize an entire batch of products. By 2021, as the company’s four Ohio locations continued to add capacity and products, keeping round-the-clock production humming began to tax the aging technology ecosystem. Computer issues occasionally slowed operations, requiring immediate IT attention to resolve the problem. Given the pace of operations and the company’s high standards, such issues were unacceptable. Leadership soon prioritized research into new technology solutions that would ensure high performance, improve efficiency, and facilitate future scaling.

Embracing technology while maintaining traditions

Rather than simply upgrade individual software components, Fresh Mark leadership took a holistic approach to data management, operations, security, and scalability. They wanted a comprehensive solution that would provide all the features and capabilities the company needed, while mitigating cybersecurity risks that too often hit older, more vulnerable, on-premises systems. IT management recommended staying the course with Microsoft and migrating to Dynamics 365, its modern cloud-based solution for Finance, Supply Chain Management, and data centralization. Leaders decided that Fresh Mark would go all in, transforming itself from a meat production company that uses technology to a technology company that produces meat.

Given the company’s history with on-premises servers and software which required diligent monitoring and maintenance, along with its busy manufacturing and shipping schedule, a critical goal was to complete the upgrade, testing, integrations, and cutover with no disruption to the rhythm of business. Although employees were initially apprehensive about a “big bang” approach, testing boosted the confidence of the Fresh Mark team, and a cutover date was set.

A necessary change brings additional benefits

With the support of implementation partner Argano, Fresh Mark went live with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Finance in January 2023. More than 300 users across the company’s administrative offices, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities went into production on the new platform. As Charlotte McCormick, President of Argano 4 Microsoft, Argano explains: "Throughout this journey, it's been great to partner with Fresh Mark. There is nothing more satisfying than aiding in the transformation of their warehouse, manufacturing and financial operations. Fresh Mark has achieved remarkable agility by transitioning to a modernized platform that fully utilizes the Microsoft ecosystem. This transition enables them to drive continuous innovation and enhance their high-performance operations.” 

“Moving to Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations has allowed us to consolidate and shut down legacy systems, simplifying our technology stack. It has positioned Fresh Mark to be on the latest versions of our most critical business systems that continue to evolve and improve over time,” adds Kevin Stahl, Vice President of Information Systems and Technology.

While the impetus for Fresh Mark’s transition to the cloud was the need to modernize software and stabilize the performance of its technology stack, the company is enjoying several other key benefits, including a 20% reduction in IT spending by the end of the solution implementation’s first year.

Flexible architecture for easier customization

Fresh Mark is a high-capacity, USDA-approved meat production company that integrates with independent software vendors for functions such as scales, meat blending, pickle brines, documentation tracking, and trucking services. Its manufacturing and business processes have been operating for decades and are designed with exact workflows to meet specific requirements. To support these existing processes and workflows, Dynamics 365 allowed the team to easily integrate custom production line HTML-based screens for raw material picking and completion processes. The screens keep input requirements so simple that workers require little training or familiarity—essential in the fast-paced, high-turnover food products and service industry.

Dynamics 365 offers flexibility to easily extend and customize its comprehensive out-of-the-box features. With all key tools integrated, the company has been able to eliminate some external support services. For example, although offered out-of-the-box, the IT team developed its own WMS system leveraging traditional inventory journals instead of WAX work which proved more performant and has better support for the company's mix of standard and catch weight product base and demanding customer aging rules. Kevin Stahl, VP of Information Systems and Technology, explains it this way: “We have a highly skilled development team that can build anything, which means we can create what’s needed to meet our unique business requirements. What’s helpful about Dynamics 365 is the ability to easily hook in these customizations without comprising the source code. This flexibility and the system’s high level of performance has been a significant benefit to us.”  

Improved efficiency and more capacity

Now that company data in both native and integrated solutions is centralized in Dynamics 365, everyone is working from near-real-time information. Whether it’s the warehouse reporting inventory levels of customer packaging materials, the transportation management system capturing accounts payable data for invoicing, or the QA department entering lot number details for traceability requirements, everything users need is at their fingertips. Centralized data ensures accuracy and saves time toggling between systems and manually entering information.

Reduced downtime for updates with automation

The IT team regularly makes changes to the system and adds new customizations. With the new system, these modifications and enhancements now execute automatically during slower periods. Updates take just 30–60 minutes and require no intervention. Previously, a technician had to take the entire system down for several hours over a weekend to complete the work. This simplifies application lifecycle management, assures safe food handling processes, and encourages the company to keep up with the latest security and features updates so that they’re not playing catch-up later.

Insightful reporting from a single source of data

In the past, creating monthly financial or manufacturing reports was a manual, laborious process and data insights were limited. Now with everything integrated, managers can quickly create robust, visually engaging reports in Power BI in a fraction of the time. This has been useful for recent capital expansion projects for tasks such as tracking spending against budget, labor efficiency results, and forecasting near-term hiring needs. As Stahl explains, “We’re always building, growing, and expanding capabilities and capacities to meet our customer’s needs. Insights from Dynamics 365 is making this process easier than before.” 

Optimizing IT with fewer systems to manage

Fresh Mark’s IT staff used to spend a significant amount of time on maintenance, repair, and updates of the company’s many and varied software and hardware systems. Now Microsoft manages much of the company’s data security and software updates in the cloud. The local IT team can focus on adding value by developing customizations and expansion projects to support the company’s growth and “technology first” strategy.

Always looking forward

Fresh Mark now has nearly 400 employees using Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management. The company successfully completed its second Easter rush (one of the busiest times of the year) since going live on its new platform, and all operations ran smoothly, easily accommodating a production volume increase year-over-year. Leadership continues to look ahead and is considering how Microsoft Fabric for AI-generated data analysis. Given the high adoption of Microsoft Copilot in Teams for summarizing meetings and action items, leadership is exploring the new Copilot for Finance to learn how it could reveal further business insights and drive even more efficiency across the organization.