Lacrosse

The Customer 

LaCrosse Footwear, Inc. is a leading developer and marketer of branded, premium and innovative footwear for expert work and outdoor users. The company’s Danner and LaCrosse brands are distributed domestically through a nationwide network of specialty retailers and distributors, and internationally through distributors and retailers in Asia, Europe and Canada. 

Work customers include people in law enforcement, agriculture, construction, industry and the military, and others in occupations that need high-performance, protective footwear as a critical tool for the job. Outdoor customers include people active in hunting, cross training, hiking and other recreational activities. Founded in 1897, the business employs around 280 people. 

The Challenge

For over 100 years, LaCrosse has been dedicated to its customers, delivering innovative, high-quality footwear. As a loyal Microsoft customer, it was still running its original on-premise Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 implementation to manage business operations and supply chain. Although it had served well for the better part of a decade, the system was now feature-limited, heavily customised and at end-of-life. 

CIO Sadri Behbahany noted that, as the system became out of date, maintenance grew increasingly complex and costly, with the company spending significant time and resources keeping it running. It could not give internal and end customers the features they wanted, and deploying changes took several days. The legacy ERP also had serious reliability issues, often crashing during the busiest times, including Black Friday, when volumes were high. Downtime and long-running, locked-up processes slowed order processing, inventory allocation, shipping and invoicing, causing havoc for IT and frustration for users and customers. Faced with aggressive growth drivers, it was clear LaCrosse had outgrown its old system and needed to modernise, centralise and move to the cloud, while staying with the trusted Microsoft platform. 

The Solution

Hitachi Solutions was chosen as a trusted Microsoft partner to modernise the systems. Once selected, the team worked collaboratively with LaCrosse to deliver a high-quality, fully integrated, scalable Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations and Supply Chain Management solution that met their needs with as few customisations as possible. 

To better predict cost, time and effort, the team first performed an initial blueprint engagement, set clear expectations, tracked accountability and kept the project on track through its best-practice delivery approach, Unified Framework. Despite having to transition to a remote working model because of the pandemic, the team completed a fresh install capable of supporting LaCrosse’s 300+ users across seven retail stores and two distribution centres, on time and with no major issues or business disruption. 

Given the complexity, integrations, and what we were trying to do, the implementation went very well. When we turned the switch on, it worked.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 live across the enterprise, LaCrosse now enjoys unified data, faster processes, improved performance and more accurate reporting. With far fewer customised extensions and integrations, the solution is more reliable, easier to manage and maintain, and enhances the overall customer experience. 

Why Hitachi Solutions

LaCrosse selected Hitachi Solutions as a trusted Microsoft partner whose refined, competent approach hit the key requirements its stakeholders were looking for. Throughout the project, having a direct line to senior leadership made a real difference. 

The key thing for me was having a direct line to the Hitachi Solutions executive leadership during the process. If I had a question or major issue, I could always reach out. They were very responsive and supportive, and, to me, that made a huge difference.

The Benefits 

• Unified data, faster processes, improved performance and more accurate reporting 
• A more stable, user-friendly system with better functionality than before 
• Far fewer customised extensions and integrations, making it more reliable and easier to maintain 
• Inventory allocation no longer a bottleneck, having previously taken many hours to run 
• Background processes and deployments much faster, taking about an hour instead of days 
• A solution that is always up to date and ready to take advantage of new Microsoft functionality 

What’s Next? 

LaCrosse is so pleased with the results that it is considering further opportunities to expand its Microsoft investment with Hitachi Solutions’ support. In the near future, this includes taking advantage of Power Apps and Power Automate to increase process efficiencies from factory to field sales, implementing point-of-sale for its retail stores, and improving distribution channel and warehouse operations.