A Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations backbone key to Hickory Farms’ growth plans

Someone who receives a Hickory Farms gift basket sees only a pleasing collection of summer sausages, hot mustards, jams, crackers, cheese, sometimes wine and fresh fruit.

But anyone in business-to-consumer (B2C) fulfillment recognizes the complexities: dozens of stock-keeping units (SKUs) from numerous vendors, local shipping for fresh goods, unfailing on-time delivery for holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays - the back-office and logistical demands go on.

Hickory Farms is migrating its complex operations to a Microsoft Dynamics for Operations backbone, and joined Microsoft in its booth at last week's National Retail Federation (NRF) "Big Show" in New York. There, they talked about simplifying their operations and positioning the company for growth, all using Dynamics 365.

As the company's Director of Information Technology Gordon Jaquay describes to MSDynamicsWorld, "We really needed to build, foundationally, a system to grow as a business. That was the primary reason to look for ERP." 

The company had explored NetSuite and Oracle as well, but "One of the reasons we landed on Dynamics 365 was that once we got into the details it was clear that Dynamics had the most functionality needed out-of-the-box, so we would do the least customization with that system. And we got into the details of the cloud power of Azure and knew it would be a good fit for our business in the type of peak season we encounter."

That underscores another unique requirement of Hickory Farms: a considerable portion of its income is between October through December, surrounding the holidays. Then, Hickory Farms opens more than 500 retail kiosks in malls across North America (it maintains no brick-and-mortar locations). Customers could walk away with what ...