Blackwoods gets its new ERP system in place

Wesfarmers’ industrial retailer Blackwoods has now “fully deployed” a Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP system and will spend the rest of the year optimising it.

The multi-year project needed 18 months of planning and several more years to implement, owing to the scale, complexity and age of the systems it replaced.

But at a strategy day earlier this week, Wesfarmers industrial and safety managing director Tim Bult said the new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was finally in place.

“Pleasingly, the ERP project has been fully deployed since November of last year,” Bult said.

“The system now runs across all of Blackwood Australia’s operations and finance on a single system. 

“This is an important milestone after a long program.”

A case study, released late last year, appears to indicate the company called in outside assistance to get the system bedded down.

The case study highlights an apparent change of scope to focus on a minimum viable product (MVP) helped get the system bedded down.

“In light of shifting programme delivery timelines, an MVP approach was adopted focusing on core service management needs only,” the case study reads. 

“This approach supported existing hard deadlines set by the programme and allowed IT to focus efforts on service support readiness and usability testing, while reducing risk in the broader deployment…”

Bult said with the ERP system in place, Blackwoods would spend the rest of 2023 optimising it.

“Our focus is now on optimising the system to accelerate Blackwoods’ service levels and seek out efficiency improvements, a process that will continue for the remainder of this calendar year,” he said.

More broadly, Bult said that Blackwoods would also continue to invest in data and digital capabilities.

He said investments so far had improved customer experience and operating efficiency,

“Ease of doing business [with Blackwoods], including the ordering process, prompt delivery, [and] correct invoicing, is a key differentiator,” Bult said.

“Our investments in digital are a key component of this.”

He added that “key priority areas” for the immediate future “are customer and supplier digitisation, inbound order processing automation, and recently-released enhanced web product search functionality”.