Trimac Transportation

The Customer 

Trimac Transportation provides bulk transportation, logistics and related transportation services throughout North America. These services include liquid bulk hauling for the chemical industries, dry bulk shipments for the construction, mining and forestry industries, petroleum-based products and industrial gases. Trimac’s mission is to create shareholder value by safely delivering products and services, creating innovative solutions to meet customers’ needs and achieving acceptable returns by delivering the lowest total cost solutions. 

Founded in 1945 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Trimac has achieved industry leadership and become one of the largest bulk carriers in North America, with more than 4,000 team members and independent contractors across over 140 branches. 

The Challenge

Trimac has many commercial partnerships with other companies, each requiring a contract outlining the terms and conditions of that partnership. Prior to working with Hitachi Solutions, Trimac’s contract management process was primarily paper-based, with the legal team processing a significant amount of paperwork manually. This was a problem for many reasons: the manual process was time-consuming and prone to error, and physical contract documents were difficult to manage and access. It was apparent that Trimac needed a centralised, searchable and secure contract management system, ideally one that was automated. 

Another key challenge was the company’s sales system. Trimac originally used Salesforce as its front-end CRM and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations on the back end, but these systems were never properly integrated, which made the entire lead-to-cash cycle disjointed. Trimac knew it had to either unite the two systems or replace Salesforce entirely, since it was using the solution as little more than a storage system for opportunity details. From a practical perspective, Trimac decided that the best way forward was to migrate from Salesforce to Microsoft, perform a full Dynamics 365 implementation, and build onto that with modules as needed, hoping in doing so to also standardise and automate its pricing tool. 

What we wanted to do was put in place something that fits with the rest of our applications and gives our users a better experience that integrates with our workflow.

From an industry perspective, Trimac also needed to plan for the future. Its website was external and passive, and the company knew it needed to move toward a self-service model and required a platform that could support the components of a customer portal. User experience was a top priority, since Trimac has a very diverse and physically dispersed user group, so it was important to provide a system that was accessible and intuitive. 

The Solution

Given that Trimac was already using Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations on the back end, migrating from Salesforce to Dynamics seemed like the logical next step, especially since the company was impressed by Microsoft’s reputation for continuous innovation. When it came time to choose an implementation partner, Trimac compared different Microsoft partners within the local Canadian market, a search that led the company to Hitachi Solutions Canada. Through conversations with Hitachi Solutions’ sales and presales teams, Trimac learned about Hitachi Solutions’ transportation IP capabilities and industry experience, and decided to partner with Hitachi Solutions to migrate from Salesforce to Dynamics and to implement Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement CRM solution. 

With Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, Trimac can now convert leads into opportunities, share rate cards, convert codes into contacts, have customers sign contracts and more, all within a consolidated, end-to-end process. This enables Trimac to closely monitor the entire lead-to-cash cycle, allowing for greater transparency and accountability. The company is also able to digitise contract management, making it easier for the legal team to review agreements, receive approval from commercial partners and monitor the status of each contract, and the system automatically generates email renewal notifications 30 to 60 days prior to contract expiry, enabling customers to automatically renew. Trimac is also able to leverage Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement’s contract management capability to track metrics for customer lifecycle management, with all of these capabilities seamlessly integrated with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and the company’s other systems. 

Why Hitachi Solutions

Trimac chose Hitachi Solutions Canada on the strength of its transportation IP and industry experience, and valued the careful budget management and genuine care the team brought to the project. 

Hitachi Solutions cared about our project. I never felt like they were going to run with a blank cheque and then start coming at us with change requests. I’ve worked with lots of different third parties to install big products, and I’ve got to say that of all of them, Hitachi stands out in my mind as one of the best to have worked with.

The Benefits 

• An integrated, end-to-end lead-to-cash cycle on a single platform, with greater transparency and accountability 
• Digitised contract management, making it easier to review agreements, gain commercial-partner approval and monitor the status of each contract 
• Automated email renewal notifications 30 to 60 days before expiry, enabling customers to renew automatically 
• The ability to track metrics for customer lifecycle management 
• Seamless integration with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and the company’s other systems 
• The building blocks for a self-service customer portal, with visibility into online orders, shipments and invoices 

What’s Next? 

Thanks to Hitachi Solutions and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, Trimac not only enjoys integrated systems, automated renewals and a more efficient contract management process, it also has the building blocks for the future. The visibility Dynamics 365 provides into online orders, shipments, invoices and more will serve as the foundation for the company’s efforts to create a self-service customer portal.