Poloplast modernizes manufacturing and streamlines forecasting and planning with Dynamics 365

Poloplast is one of Europe’s leading providers of high-performance plastic piping systems for building technology, infrastructure, and industrial applications. With a strong focus on quality, sustainability, and innovation, the company delivers globally benchmarked solutions from product development to on-time delivery. 

To modernize its demand planning and business performance processes, Poloplast implemented an integrated solution based on demand planning in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Business Performance Planning in Dynamics 365 Finance, Power Platform tools, and Microsoft Copilot Studio. By replacing legacy systems with Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and AI-driven tools, Poloplast has achieved operational excellence, empowered its workforce, and positioned itself for future innovation.

Building a connected and efficient enterprise

For 70 years, Poloplast has been at the forefront of technological innovation in plastic pipe systems and polymer compounds. What began as a regional niche supplier in Austria has grown into one of Europe’s leading manufacturers, renowned for intelligent systemic solutions in building services and civil engineering. The company’s mission is rooted in continuous improvement, sustainability, and delivering high-quality products that shape infrastructure across the continent. 

In late 2022, as part of a broader initiative to modernize its IT environment, Poloplast sought to automate processes and gain deeper visibility into inventory by replacing its legacy ERP solution. “We had an outdated AS/400 system that was already showing its age, and many of the people who could support it were retiring,” says Patrick Keller, Head of ERP, Poloplast.

To address this challenge, Poloplast implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 across the business. Poloplast worked closely with BE-terna, a Microsoft implementation partner, to roll out Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, and Power Platform tools, including Power Automate to streamline processes, Power Apps for custom scenarios such as supplier communication and transportation management, and Power Automate for process mining. Additionally, Poloplast uses an Azure SQL Database, accessible via Power BI, for reporting. BE-terna also helped Poloplast implement additional add-ons and integrations. The integrated solution now supports key business functions including supply chain management, sales and shipping, warehouse and material management, purchasing and production, accounting and controlling, transactions, and analytics.

To reimagine its forecasting capabilities, Poloplast introduced demand planning in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, an app that uses forecasting algorithms, intelligent reports, and analytics to help create accessible, no-code forecasting. It also uses AI to support precise forecasting and improve accuracy. 

“We are fully utilizing it. We have almost every feature turned on in demand planning,” says Keller. The company is also testing the solution’s AI capabilities and Microsoft Copilot Studio summary creation feature. 

Transforming business performance planning 

With demand planning established, Poloplast began focusing on transforming its budgeting and forecasting operations. “We had already seen demand planning benefits. Things were faster and more accurate, and we had a good combination of tools, but only on the sales side. It wasn’t really for budgeting,” says Keller. “The most important step for us was getting the data right and easily into Dynamics 365, so we could create the data, flow it into demand planning, and then adjust it for business performance planning.” 

The company achieved that by working with Microsoft to implement Dynamics 365 Finance Business Performance Planning (BPP), a modern planning solution that connects operational and financial planning, instead of relying on rigid, model-heavy planning systems. BPP enables teams to reuse finance data, layer in demand and business assumptions, and adjust plans directly in Power BI and Excel. These capabilities made budgeting and forecasting faster to build, easier to change, and better aligned with how Poloplast’s business operates. 

“With Business Performance Planning, we saw a tool that would allow us to map and import data, calculate values, quickly create a new budget, and make the changes visible to users in real time,” Keller says. By adopting the BPP app, Poloplast now has a seamless pipeline between demand planning, business performance, and Dynamics 365 for budgeting, forecasting, and scenario planning.

Enabling faster planning and more accurate budgets 

With Dynamics 365 Finance Business Performance Planning, Poloplast is accelerating business performance planning with real-time data. 

“With Dynamics 365 Finance Business Performance Planning, we have results one minute after we enter all the data,” says Nicole Eidenberger, Researcher, Poloplast. “We can now plan first bottom-up and then, once data is ready, a department head can say, ‘I want to change it top-down without losing the details.’ We can easily add 5% overall or in specific parts.”

Budgets are now more accurate thanks to detailed item-level data, and the demand planning forecasting engine usually outperforms manual predictions. 

Poloplast also has a deeper view of all planning data in one place. Previously, the company could not easily visualize generalized values in budget plans. “We could see combined budgets for specific product groups but not for the items themselves,” Keller says. “Now, we can see the item-level details and the solution populates Dynamics 365 with that information for master planning. That’s a big step forward because now we essentially have a planned budget and we can easily produce the next production cycle's budget without manually exporting the data. This will ultimately make the whole planning process faster.”

Fostering collaboration and driving automation

With demand planning in Supply Chain Management and business performance planning in Finance, Poloplast now benefits from more connected processes. Real-time data visibility in Dynamics 365 promotes cross-departmental collaboration, with budgeting and forecasting accessible to both finance and operations.

Using Power Automate to streamline workflows, Poloplast has automated invoice processing and data migration. Process mining with Power Automate has also helped the company easily visualize workflows and identify bottlenecks. 

With more efficient operational systems, the company has reduced data warehouse creation time from 9-10 hours to 5-6 hours. It also uses batch processing in Dynamics 365 to automate invoice posting, sales confirmations, and purchasing to save additional time.

Stepping into an agentic future

Poloplast is now exploring AI agents to drive further automation and efficiency. Using Microsoft Copilot Studio, the company has created chatbots that can access its knowledge base and SharePoint data to help employees quickly find information. Other AI agents summarize corporate information from SharePoint, OneDrive, and Excel files and automatically create email templates.

The company is also testing the new Supplier Communications Agent in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, which uses AI to automate communications with vendors. Poloplast plans to extend AI-driven automation in finance and production and has launched internal workshops to onboard more users and promote AI literacy.

Says Keller, “We will definitely try every agent and AI capability Dynamics 365 has to offer.”