V&P Scientific

V&P SCIENTIFIC MANAGES SURGING GROWTH BY MODERNIZING ERP AND CRM 

WESTERN COMPUTER DEPLOYS MICROSOFT DYNAMICS 365 BUSINESS CENTRAL AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

THE SOLUTION 

V&P Scientific represents a true family success story. Dr. Patrick Herbert Cleveland—a scientist, professor, and entrepreneur from Montana—founded V&P Scientific along with his wife, Victoria. Lauri Schlopy, their daughter, first worked at the company when she was just 12 years old.  

After expanding her career experiences at other companies, Schlopy returned as the CFO in 2020—just after the Covid pandemic started. One of her first missions was to modernize the company’s ERP platform. A joint effort was also launched by the senior management team to update the CRM system.  

“We relied on legacy systems for both ERP and CRM, and with surging growth due to customers requiring Covid testing solutions, those systems hampered our workflow efficiencies,” Schlopy says. “In addition to leveraging modern cloud technologies, we also wanted to integrate ERP and CRM—so real-time data could flow automatically between the two systems. This would allow us to avoid rekeying information manually and give us immediate visibility into the status of all business activity.” 

Schlopy and the V&P Scientific management team decided to solve this challenge by deploying two Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions: Business Central and Customer Engagement (CE). The company also considered NetSuite and SAP for the ERP platform but turned to Business Central for its ability to integrate with Dynamics 365 CE.  

While researching solutions, Schlopy came across Western Computer as a leading provider of Dynamics 365 solutions along with a track record of working with manufacturing firms. “The online reviews and ratings posted by customers were consistently higher for Western Computer,” Schlopy says. “Compared to other solution providers, we were impressed with their responsiveness. Western Computer applies a hands-on, personal approach and is easy to work with.” 

Western Computer set up Business Central to manage finance, manufacturing, and inventory while CE was configured to run marketing, sales and customer service workflows. Western Computer also helped V&P Scientific define and document ERP workflows and created an API that allows CE and Business Central to synchronize units of measure. Western Computer then provided guidance on how to adjust the naming conventions of the 9,000 items in the V&P Scientific inventory, which uses a wide range of scientific terms.  

THE BENEFITS 

With standard naming conventions, it’s now easier for V&P Scientific to track inventory and capture costs on each bill of materials. This, in turn, makes it simpler to measure product margins.  

The documented workflows streamline the process for new employees to pick up on how each manufacturing workflow should be completed. Using a cloud solution rather than an on-premises solution also has benefits.  

“I work in Houston while everyone else is in San Diego,” Schlopy says. “We can conduct meetings in Microsoft Teams just like we’re together and easily access the information in Business Central and CE since the applications are all part of the Microsoft ecosystem.  And with the integration to Power BI reports, we can pull data right from Business Central without having to leave Teams.”  

By leveraging Business Central, V&P Scientific has reduced days outstanding on shipments to customers while variances in inventory hand-counts have decreased by 10%. “This helps us make sure every bill of materials contains all the necessary components,” Schlopy says. “Using Business Central has also given our staff greater discipline around inventory, bills of materials, and the tracking of sales orders and purchase orders. This creates an environment and a structure of doing things the right way.”   

In other areas of the business, V&P Scientific uses CE to manage marketing programs, and customer relationship management has improved with the transparency of all email exchanges with customers. The customer service team can track where a product or item is and access documented conversations about returned or defective products. 

“Our CEO and COO both utilize CE to the fullest,” Schlopy adds. “They create workflows, entities, and tasks so that it has become the go-to portal to see what’s going on for the entire business—the flexibility of CE lets us mold the software to what we need. We also have a better handle on our true net profit as we factor in shipping and customs, which can be a substantial amount on a per unit basis when working with our overseas vendors.”  

Looking ahead, Schlopy plans to expand the use of Dynamics 365 Business Central to monitor and manage vendors. This will help reduce order turnaround times, which is critical given the supply chain issues faced by all industry sectors.  

“With Microsoft Power BI reports pulling data from Business Central, we can easily track every vendor,” says Schlopy. “This lets everyone see reports about vendors during our weekly meetings so we can quickly follow up to find out why they haven't delivered an order on time.”