AOCUSA Case Study
Strabo Partners Helps AOCUSA Save Significant Time and Costs with Complex AX to Dynamics 365 Cloud Migration
Strabo is an excellent partner who is open, honest, and collaborative. They have opened up new opportunities for us and the best part is we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what we can do in the cloud with Dynamics 365 and future integrations.
Gianni Barkett - CTO
Strabo Partners Helps AOCUSA Save Significant Time and Costs with Complex AX to Dynamics 365 Cloud Migration
Strabo is an excellent partner who is open, honest, and collaborative. They have opened up new opportunities for us and the best part is we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what we can do in the cloud with Dynamics 365 and future integrations.
Gianni Barkett - CTO
AOCUSA Overview
Founded in 1903, AOCUSA is the largest privately held independent blender of motor oils and industrial lubricants. The company blends and packages over 3,000 different products in state-of-the art production facilities and ships to every state in America and over 100 foreign countries.
Strabo Partners worked closely with a highly skilled AOCUSA team to migrate AX to Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management and implement Strabo’s Price Plus solution.
Challenges
Using a highly customized Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 system that was no longer supported by Microsoft, AOCUSA leaders wanted to upgrade their ERP solution to Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain management and migrate their infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud.
One of the biggest pains we had with Dynamics AX was data integration, particularly between AX and our laboratory information system. We are a 24/7 operation processing large volumes of data and had to use a third-party tool that was slow and unstable. When overnight data transfers failed, it caused issues for our personnel and production. says Gianni Barkett, AOCUSA Chief Technology Officer.
We don’t fit the typical mold of an oil and gas company or manufacturer and had several customizations and integrations with AX so we knew this would require the right partner. Our model includes discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, blending and compounding, blow molding our own bottles, complicated load and unload procedures, and commodity-based pricing. Strabo understood our business and had the best ‘lift and shift’ approach while other partners tried to force us out of making the enhancements we needed.
Strabo Solutions
- Gianni Barkett
AOCUSA evaluated multiple partners for their AX to Dynamics 365 cloud migration and chose Strabo Partners for their deep industry and technical expertise and fixed-fee approach. They also had the most efficient plan from a cost and duration perspective.
In close collaboration with an exceptional AOCUSA team, Strabo Partners leveraged decades of expertise in Microsoft Dynamics, oil and gas, manufacturing, and warehousing to deliver a smooth transition to the cloud.
With Strabo’s focused plan and fixed-fee approach, combined with the enhanced capabilities in Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management, AOCUSA is enjoying numerous improvements in functionality, performance, and efficiency and saving time, resources, and costs in several areas.
Integrated Financial Management
AOCUSA had been using JD Edwards since 1997 and was able to eliminate the disparate system and shift all financial management to Dynamics 365 Finance.
Unified Cloud ERP and Infrastructure that will Never Go Out of Date
Because Dynamics 365 provides automatic updates, AOCUSA will always be on the latest version with the latest enhancements—no version upgrades required.
When we went live with AX, within months there was an entirely new version released so we were already out of date. Then there was a major upgrade to our version that was almost like a reimplementation. Three months after we went live with Dynamics 365, there was a major update with hundreds of enhancements. It had the potential to be a horrible mess, but Strabo proactively reviewed the release notes, advised us on what to enable, planned and tested the changes, and it went very smoothly.
- Gianni Barkett
Flexible Pricing with Strabo Price Plus
In a commodity-based business, pricing is volatile and required several enhancements in AX. Doing one price movement per month for over 5,000 finished goods would take days or weeks. Now it takes very little effort, says Gianni.
Strabo’s Price Plus software gives AOCUSA the flexibility and agility to keep up with market demand. They can now:
- Make pricing changes in hours vs. days or weeks
- Identify price calculations for order lines in seconds
- Update pricing on individual orders in seconds
Results
There has been a substantial reduction in the time and costs required to support their users and technology. Seamless integrations and new capabilities for front-line users have reduced IT support and resulted in:
Eliminating our third-party data integration tool was huge for us and Strabo did a fantastic job, says Gianni. Now data is transferred seamlessly and reliably using Power Automate with APIs. This also eliminated 21 servers and means fewer touchpoints to investigate if an issue occurs.
Efficient, Empowered Users
Dynamics 365 includes new features and capabilities such as Workspaces that enable employees to save time and effort on daily tasks. Operations personnel have been particularly enthusiastic about the upgrade and the freedom to work from their tablets and mobile devices in the warehouse. They even have their own Teams channel where they can help each other.
Reliable Printing Across Multiple Facilities
AOCUSA has around 100 printers across the organization which used to require a third-party integration to manage. Dynamics 365 natively includes a Document Routing Agent (DRA) which eliminated the cost and maintenance of the previous integration.
- Gianni Barkett