Danish Agro
Columbus restores Danish Agro’s retail operations with rapid Microsoft Dynamics 365 rollout
Three years back, Danish Agro started consolidating and aligning its internal businesses with a single ERP and CRM solution. According to Chief Information Off icer Bo Rønn, the cooperative chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 early in the process because of its ability to integrate a multitude of divisions and unique businesses.
Danish Agro performed a proof of concept and defi ned 10 business-critical processes. The project to deploy Dynamics 365 then started in the business units Agribusiness and Service Divisions.
The original plan was a slow, incremental adoption that prioritized quality over speed. However, this changed when a major ransomware attack shuttered a large section of the cooperative’s IT system.
The attack shut down POS and CRM systems and forced employees to manually perform those functions, although production facilities remained operational. As the company attempted to restart its 450 servers and those of its 3,000 IT-users, it had to also ensure that there was suff icient security in place to block potential intruders.
Overcoming challenges: Project Quick Retail
Almost as soon as the ransomware attacked Danish Agro’s IT infrastructure, the Columbus team stepped in to develop a fast-moving deployment plan in association with the cooperative’s project team. The plan identified the most important components necessary to restart its servers and those of its customers while helping ensure security. The project was named “Quick Retail”.
Columbus initiated the recovery process with Danish Agro Shoppen, a Danish retail chain with no less than 21 physical locations, plus an online store. These stores were struggling to maintain operations with manual methods because of the outdated retail solution.
Bo Rønn, Chief Information Officer, explains:
“Trying to restore or get the old systems to be operational again would have been time consuming, if not impossible. Given that we were already going to change the setup soon with the Dynamics 365 retail project, a rapid installation was performed to get the systems running.”
The first step towards ensuring this rapid installation was Columbus and Danish Agro agreeing that the original plan to deploy over six months needed to be compressed to four weeks. This was followed by discussions that revolved around what needed to be done to achieve this goal, the elements that were required to be part of the solution, and how the process could be accelerated.
In sharp contrast to the original deployment’s conditions, the new situation required operating within a fast time limit. This meant that not every part of the solution had to be perfect immediately.
Columbus made this balance between speed and functionality possible for Danish Agro by leveraging Dynamics 365 optimally, to bring together the cooperative’s systems and processes to streamline operations, giving Danish Agro:
- A single view of operations
- Helping transform its retail business practices, leading to better business decisions being made
- New practices through broader offerings like Microsoft Power Platform, Azure, and Microsoft 365
Columbus tapped into Dynamics 365 Finance and Operation’s user friendliness and its ability to work remotely (through Microsoft Teams) to ensure Danish Agro’s systems were up and running at each location.
The deployment and setup needed 22 super users and around 80 employees to be educated on the involved intricacies - a task the Columbus team took up, and delivered on, successfully by cooperating fruitfully with the agribusiness’ other technology partners.
“When the attack happened, without any warning signs, a recovery process had to be put into action immediately. The Columbus team not only quickly developed a rapid deployment plan for Dynamics 365, but also combined speed and functionality to install, set up and train our personnel by collaborating with our other tech partners,” Rønn says, while speaking about how it felt to experience the ransom attack and Danish Agro’s experience of Columbus solving the issue for the agribusiness.
“Working with the Columbus team has been enriching, to say the least. Their expertise, professionalism and power to deliver even during crisis situations – like the one Danish Agro experienced when the ransomware attack happened – has been outstanding.”
Bo Rønn, Chief Information Officer, Danish Agro
What is Columbus helping Danish Agro achieve?
Columbus ensured the accelerated migration of Danish Agro to the Dynamics 365 solution by rapidly restoring every ERP functionality. In fact, the solution was rolled out in just four weeks to no less than 21 Danish Agro physical retail stores as well as its webstore. The cooperative was not only able to resume operations but was able to also improve web operations with a more customer-friendly, easy-to-use platform.
Expressing Danish Agro’s view of its collaboration with Columbus and the latter’s competence, Rønn says,
“Working with the Columbus team has been enriching, to say the least. Their expertise, professionalism and power to deliver even during crisis situations – like the one Danish Agro experienced when the ransomware attack happened – has been outstanding.”
Danish Agro – in collaboration with Columbus – now plans speedy deployment of Dynamics 365 in other areas of its business too.
