Key Benefits
- Increased ability to track invoices and PO’s
- Facilitated growth
- Increased organization and productivity
- Integration with Microsoft Dynamics® GP
Read the PDF of the Full Case Study
Situated amid the sprawling wooded regions of Northern Michigan, Dutchman Tree Farms, LLC, specializes in individual, wholesale and customized orders of Christmas trees and shrubbery. They provide balled and burlap trees, container-grown trees, wreaths, shrubbery and accessories to diverse buyers ranging from large retail vendors like Home Depot® down to local corner tree lots. The company uses AccellosOne EDI integrated with the Microsoft Dynamics GP accounting system to manage its continual influx of orders, improve the traceability of outbound product and facilitate further growth into new areas of the industry.
Company
Dutchman Tree Farms was founded in 1972 by Steve VanderWeide and his wife Deborah, making their start by retailing trees at a farmers market in Atlanta, Georgia. The company was very small at the time, with Steve, Deborah and a few seasonal workers handling the day-to-day responsibilities for nearly 10 years. In the late 1970’s, The VanderWeides decided that they would transition their company from retailer to wholesaler. The reasoning behind this big move was simple -- they wanted to open their business to greater opportunity in the tree farming industry, as well as offer their affiliates the ability to retail Dutchman Tree Farm trees with ease of mind.
Since becoming a wholesaler, Dutchman Tree Farms has grown exponentially. Nowadays, the Manton, Michigan company employs upwards of 200 people during their harvesting season. The company has not only grown in employees, but in clientele and acreage as well. Today, Dutchman services over 1000 customers and covers 6000 acres of land spread across six counties in Michigan.
Situation
Dutchman used a homegrown EDI solution for some time. The problem the staff faced was that the solution did not have the ability to integrate to the company’s Active Accounting system. With this shortcoming causing serious strain on their growing business, the company’s leadership saw an imminent need to purchase a solution that would better facilitate their accounting practices and save precious time and money for their business.
Justin Bartlett, Assistant Sales Manager, and Pam Vanderwal, Office Manager, took the lead on researching EDI solutions with direct integration to Microsoft Dynamics GP.
AccellosOne EDI for GP
AccellosOne EDI for Microsoft Dynamics GP is an automated electronic document interchange solution that has been developed from the ground up for the Microsoft Dynamics GP environment. It accepts inbound and outbound electronic documents in any format – X.12 EDI, XML, flat files and more – and automatically converts them to any corresponding format that is required for further processing.
AccellosOne EDI for Microsoft Dynamics GP works directly with the workflows native to Dynamics GP. It also utilizes navigational components in the EDI software that are actually native to Dynamics GP, so users only need learn them once. Flexible cross-references reduce both the implementation cycle and time to production while keeping configuration and ongoing maintenance operations to a minimum.
Solution
Having identified AccellosOne EDI for Dynamics GP as a forerunning solution during their research, Justin Bartlett and Pam Vanderwall attended a product demonstration given by Accellos Senior Consultant Steve Norris. Soon after the demonstration, the Dutchman team decided that AccellosOne EDI for Microsoft Dynamics GP was the perfect fit their company. With the approval of, Chris Maciborski and Joel Hoekwater they made the final decision to purchase the product.
“Accellos’ EDI solution came highly recommended to us by our peers,” said Justin. “We did look at several other products, but after attending the demonstration with Chris, we realized that this was the one for us. What initially caught our eye was the system’s ability to integrate directly to our Microsoft Dynamics GP accounting software.”
After purchasing the solution, the Dutchman staff implemented the package both in-house and with the help of Steve Norris and implementation consulting firm NetStandard.
“Steve was wonderful,” said Justin. “He worked with NetStandard to set up the software and with our GP partner to import all of our company data. The entire implementation process was done very quickly and couldn’t have been any easier for us.” The Dutchman staff also undertook a comprehensive product instruction course with Steve, where they were able to learn the features and workflows of the software.
Results
Dutchman Tree Farms is currently using AccellosOne EDI for Microsoft Dynamics GP for sales order processing and exchange of invoices and purchase orders with their largest partners on a daily basis.
“Being able to account for vendor-managed inventory is one of the features of the Accellos EDI system that we use most often. The program constantly keeps us informed on remaining inventory in our partnering stores,” said Justin.
Dutchman invested in AccellosOne EDI for GP to reduce the stress of managing customer orders for their ever-growing company. Since implementing the system, that growth has continued while the issues have all but disappeared, thanks to the tremendous increase in organization and productivity.
“This was absolutely a worthwhile investment,” said Justin. “Without the Accellos EDI solution, we would not be as confident as we are about growing in the industry. We also really like having the ability to track everything that leaves our company.”
Recently, Dutchman acquired a seedling nursery and wreath company to add to their broadening assortment of products.
“We are constantly changing and growing in order to offer the best assortment of products,” said Justin. “Accellos EDI with Dynamics GP will only help us grow as we move forward.”
