Amber Hickman |
Australian steel manufacturer BlueScope has used Microsoft Dynamics 365 to consolidate applications and update its enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, to improve customer and employee experiences.
The firm has used the Crowe Metals Accelerator on Dynamics 365, with assistance from Microsoft partner DXC Technology to implement and customise the software.
“Improving the experience of our customers and employees, and providing a single view across our supply chain, was either not possible or required increasing levels of complexity,” said Jagdeep Singh, head of strategy and transformation for BlueScope Australia’s Steel Product IT department. “For instance, in Australia we have over 300 applications supporting our Coated and Industrial Products business. Many of these systems are point-to-point connected, with black and white screens, making it very difficult for our employees to use and for our IT teams to maintain.”
In the first phase of the project BlueScope decommissioned 13 legacy systems and implemented a new self-service online portal based on Microsoft Power Platform which will expand customers’ access to information. It also has a new customer portal called SteelConnect.
BlueScope has already onboarded 300 users onto its new ERP system
“Our customers can now get more detail about their account via the customer portal,” said Singh. “Employees no longer have to dive into multiple systems – many of them built last century – to complete business processes or even answer simple customer queries.
“Internally, we have greater visibility of enquiries from our customers across cross-functional teams. We also have the ability to create Power BI reports utilising a common set of data.”
So far BlueScope has onboarded around 300 users onto its ERP system, with plans to add another 250 in future phases.