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.
GB
Gianni Barkett
Chief Technology Officer, AOCUSA
A 120+ Year-Old Manufacturer That Doesn't Fit the Mold
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.
An unsupported ERP and unstable integrations
Running on a highly customized Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 system that was no longer supported by Microsoft, AOCUSA leaders wanted to upgrade to Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management and migrate their infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud.
Slow, unstable data integration
“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.”
— Gianni Barkett, CTO
A model that needed the right partner
“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. 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.”
— Gianni Barkett, CTO
A focused, fixed-fee path to the cloud
AOCUSA evaluated multiple partners for their AX to Dynamics 365 cloud migration and chose Strabo Partners for our deep industry/technical expertise and fixed-fee approach. We 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 numerous improvements in functionality, performance, and efficiency.
Strabo Partners is a high-integrity firm that understood our complex manufacturing and pricing requirements. We are very happy with the improvements we have seen and excited to have a cloud platform and partner that can support our growth and innovation into the future.
Integrated financial management
AOCUSA had been using JD Edwards since 1997 and was able to eliminate the disparate system, shifting all financial management to Dynamics 365 Finance.
A cloud ERP that never goes 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.
Flexible pricing for a volatile commodity business
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. Strabo's Price Plus software gives AOCUSA the flexibility and agility to keep up with market demand.
Hours, not weeks
Make pricing changes in hours vs. days or weeks.
Instant calculations
Identify price calculations for order lines in seconds.
Order-level control
Update pricing on individual orders in seconds.
“When we went live with AX, within months there was an entirely new version released, so we were already out of date… 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.”
A Substantial Reduction in Time and Cost
Seamless integrations and new capabilities for front-line users have reduced IT support and freed the team to focus on higher-value work.
Eliminating our third-party data integration tool was huge for us and Strabo did a fantastic job. 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 features like Workspaces help employees save time on daily tasks. Operations personnel are especially enthusiastic about the freedom to work from tablets and mobile devices in the warehouse, they even have their own Teams channel to help each other.
Reliable Printing Across Facilities
AOCUSA's ~100 printers once required a third-party integration. Dynamics 365 natively includes a Document Routing Agent (DRA), eliminating that cost and maintenance. With little documentation available, Strabo became the experts on it; this was critical, since industrial label printing can shut the enterprise down if it fails.