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Flakeboard Company Limited

With acquisitions in 2006 of three MDF and three particleboard plants from Weyerhaeuser, Flakeboard has added 1.1 billion square feet of manufacturing capacity, nearly quadrupling their previous production capacity. With this rapid growth, Flakeboard encountered several challenges within their existing systems and processes. First, the Canadian mill financials were managed individually on an older ERP system that was not scalable, and Flakeboard did not have the requisite staff or IT systems in place to take on the financial management of the six new mills in the United States. Additionally, Flakeboard had a 40-day deadline before their first month-end closing, so Flakeboard had to find an alternative financial management solution quickly to keep the business running smoothly and thus avoid the high costs of implementing services with SAP R/3 and retaining Weyerhaeuser to provide those costly transition services. Flakeboard was resigned to engage Weyerhaeuser to supply the necessary business process outsourcing, until they engaged Strategic Solutions NW.

As a result Flakeboard chose to implement Microsoft Dynamics AX for their scalable accounting system, and decided that Strategic Solutions NW was the best firm to implement the new system because SSNW's deep and broad system and industry expertise.

Within six weeks SSNW successfully deployed the new system that created an accounting center for the new entity to do most financial functions in less than six weeks. This included converting from Weyerhaeuser's financial systems to a new financial system, hiring staff, creating policies and procedures, and running the day-to-day financial operations.

This endeavor included hosting the software with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition. Strategic Solutions NW also developed the interface to enable the new Dynamics AX system to integrate with Flakeboard's custom order management system as well the Maximo-purchasing and inventory management software. Lastly, SSNW configured the new system to provide financial information through a business portal so that mill management can easily perform inquiry functions essential to running the business.

Despite the short 40-day deadline, new systems and processes were implemented seamlessly and the employees found the transition painless. The result from using Microsoft Dynamics AX instead of engaging Weyerhaeuser to provide services via SAP R/3 was a total savings of approximately 5 million dollars. This figure does not take into account the savings Flakeboard realized by eliminating the need for an internal IT staff because of the on demand help provided by Strategic Solutions NW. Another indicator of success is that Flakeboard engaged with SSNW for services over a period of 20 months.

Strategic Solutions NW's work with Flakeboard was also singled out by Microsoft as a case study in software and consulting excellence on their website: Microsoft Flakeboard Case Study.

If your organization is going through the Merger and Acquisition process; or is considering Business Process Outsourcing in IT or Finance as a way to find operational and economic efficiencies; Strategic Solutions NW would like to hear from you