Global company increases productivity by 33% with new ERP solution

Over the past five years, Nanoleaf has methodically evaluated market opportunities and developed local staff and assets to competitively service those markets. Globally, the finance team has grown to 10 full-time employees, who are instrumental in helping Nanoleaf’s local teams prioritize opportunities and develop strategies.

At the time, their current accounting system was modern and well-designed. However, it didn’t meet the needs of a global organization existing as group of companies. Nanoleaf was also using three different systems designed for regional compliance and reporting of the company’s host country, resulting in fragmented inventory records existing outside of the accounting ledger. Because of this, properly valuing inventory on the ledger was laborious and prone to human error.

These issues challenged the company’s budgeting and financial planning. Nanoleaf struggled to adapt quickly to changing market and operational conditions, and stockouts were common.

Realizing they needed an ERP system that supported multiple locations and languages, Nanoleaf turned to MNP and their advisor referred them to the MNP Digital team.

After gaining an in-depth understanding of Nanoleaf’s requirements, MNP Digital conducted a market scan and recommended Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The system would allow Nanoleaf to rapidly integrate finance, supply chain, forecasting, and business management into a single system.

Business Central would also provide the ability to customize functions in-house to meet the unique needs of Nanoleaf’s various teams. Additionally, the controls built into the platform would help the company stay compliant with accounting standards under the International Financial Reporting Standards rules.

MNP Digital provided an implementation plan that allowed Nanoleaf to meet its aggressive timeline for deployment, with each region completing implementation and training in about four months. The MNP Digital team customized the solution for each country and provided functional system training to the finance and operations teams.

Dynamics 365 Business Central ensured Nanoleaf could keep its financials accessible and up to date, and gain better control of its supply chain. The primary benefit has been in process automation and productivity improvement. Both the supply chain and finance teams are seeing marked improvements, with a 33 percent productivity improvement in supply chain operations. More time can now be spent focusing on financial planning and cashflow management, which has become more effective.

Since implementation Nanoleaf has continued to adapt the platform to its specific needs, from streamlining operations with job queues to adapting user interfaces for its third-party drop shippers who store products. Real-time data on product sales and inventory levels help them manage the supply chain more effectively and reduce opportunity cost resulting from overstock.

In the past, staff had to address stockouts and split shipments manually. Now, much of this work has been automated with code units Nanoleaf’s team developed for routing along quality and cost-optimized business rules. The company has also applied machine learning tools from Azure Cloud into a forecasting process that holds the promise of eventually generating demand and supply forecasts with fewer labour hours.