Transcript of Millcraft Customer Testimonial Video

[00:34] My name is Mike Branch. I am the CIO for Millcraft. We are a hundred year old paper distribution company based out of Cleveland, Ohio. D365 for Millcraft was just kind of the vital next step. We have been through multiple implementations between AX 4, AX 12. It has positioned us to grow the business to where we have it today, and D365 is the vital next step to put us on a platform for continuous improvement.

[01:05] The importance of D365 to Millcraft is that foundation for continuous improvement into a system that we know can grow with us, and we can grow with it. It positions us to integrate our data and analytics which we've painstakingly integrated over the years into a highly customized ERP. And it allows us to tie in our modern platform of e-commerce as well.

[01:39] Training for D365 probably came a little late in our planning process. We were guided by our partner. It was a wonderful partner, but nobody's perfect. And, their training and education of our system was a little bit late in the cadence of their project plan. So, it became very clear early on in our project that we had missed the opportunity to train and educate ourselves on the system prior to jumping headfirst into the implementation with our partner.

[02:10] Two years ago at Community Summit, we sat in on a session with Item by Item and one of their current clients, and heard the story about how they worked through their implementation together. It was very intriguing for us, so we stopped at the Expo later that day, and got to know Elif and her product.

[02:35] And it immediately caught our attention because of two things. Basically an all encompassing product that taught us the system from the ground up from the beginning base, and then its platform gave us a very simple assignment tool to distribute training to our vital core users and our stakeholders to dive in and start learning the system from the beginning and do it in the middle of their day jobs.

[03:05] Item by Item was vital for the stakeholders of our project. Early on trying to find the value and why we were going to spend such a large amount of money to migrate under a partner supervision, so that we know we would yield the product that we need. We had a gap of understanding where the value was coming from. We had a gap of telling our partner what we wanted.

[03:30] So jumping in and learning the base system little by little specific to each department of our stakeholders, areas of expertise, allowed us to create an as-is to-be state that helped us deliver requirements to our partner that we knew would then yield the ROI for the project in the first place. 

[03:48] The individual videos in the Item by Item platform are wonderful. They are short. They are to the point. They are targeted for specific users and very easy to any kind type of learner. Whether you want to be a learner who listens and absorbs, listens and follows along in the system or watches the system alone. It catered to all of our users and we had very little objections to anybody that we onboarded into the system.

[04:16] Item by Item’s learning paths, being able to be targeted to specific users, were wonderful so that I didn't have any subject matter experts learning about things in the system that they would not use or care about. So, they felt like we were targeting them specific to their role and what was going to be important to them moving forward into the system, and that we weren't wasting their time, not respecting their current day jobs and their vital importance to the project.

[04:46] At the end of each learning path, they did offer assessments that we did take advantage of, and I got a lot of wonderful feedback from our users. They were assessments that yielded questions that demanded the familiarity of what you'd just been through, which were wonderful, but the system allows you to go back and revisit each training course within the learning path while you're taking the assessment so that you can revisit the training. And our users loved that because it made them go back and really absorb what was vital to them to learn in that learning path. So, it was not a stressful thing, it was an enjoyment, and it helped them focus on truly what was going to be the most vital things that they learned out of those learning paths.

[05:27] Feedback from our users about the platform was wonderful. It gave them a short to the point tool, targeted training, and assigned curriculum that they could focus on, they knew was applicable to them in their world, and that they knew once they learned, they would be able to drive much more impact and much more value into our migration project.

[05:52] Item by Item is phenomenal to work with. Anytime we had a question, it was a quick email, a quick phone call, and there's no problem to set up a 30-minute call to kind of coordinate. The system set up and, you know, overall implementation of their platform was super easy, almost kind of self-explanatory.

[06:12] What the best part of working with them was that we could call her with questions that says “We're experiencing this. Is that normal? Hey, we've got a lot of users that are at a point where they want to dive into another section of training. Is that normal? Yes, absolutely. You're entering kind of what we call this phase of training. You're entering kind of this phase of the project.” So it wasn't just a here's how to use the platform. It was true project expertise, support at the drop of a text message, a phone call or an email.

[06:45] Item by Item is absolutely a product that should be explored by any company going through a migration or any kind of upgrade or as a tool to be utilized for new hires. So, the number one thing that we found was overall education of the system to help us map out value for our major migration.

[07:07] The other bonuses came along the way where we now had a library of training to offer to our lower level users, our new hires, and that we have a platform that will continue to evolve with us as we upgrade the system, as we stay in line with upcoming Microsoft enhancements. So, big fan of it. It was a huge help for Millcraft and recommended to anybody out there looking to dive into some training and education prior to their migration to D365.