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readily follow Kelly Tractor Co.’s changing business from other Caterpillar dealers and the equipment
requirements. A large number of customizations manufacturers.
added during many years of usage made the dealer The company’s software systems performed batch
management software cumbersome to maintain updates after hours to reflect transactions. Because
and manage. As John Rose, Information Services of this, Kelly Tractor Co. employees lacked timely
Manager at Kelly Tractor Co., explains, “The software insight into inventory, financials, and other details.
capabilities did not improve significantly over time, During batch processing, customers could not
and certainly not at the pace we wanted to move. access the company’s online systems to enter orders
For example, if we wanted to add a field or change a or check on the availability of parts. Managers had
process detail, it took weeks or months to implement to wait for weekly or monthly reports to perform
that change because we had to modify the programs business planning, or request special support
written in Cobol or RPG. File changes or integration from the IT department if they needed additional
with other software were even more difficult tasks.” information. Inventory managers were not always
Given the broad array of heavy machinery and other able to tell which items moved quickly and which
equipment Kelly Tractor Co. provides and supports, items rarely turned over. Employees frequently
the company maintains a huge parts inventory. needed to manually enter the same information into
Customers also rely on the will-call desks at Kelly separate systems, and they often worked without
Tractor Co. locations to pick up parts. The Caterpillar safeguards and parameters to prevent them from
parts catalog alone comprises several million items, entering erroneous data.
with hundreds of thousands of parts that are always Nick Kelly, Dealer Principal and an owner of Kelly
in demand. The company’s inventory management Tractor Co., says, “We had a vision of moving the
and product support sales teams need to know the business forward, taking full advantage of new
current inventory status, how inventory items turn technologies that could be responsive to changes in
over, and the availability of items. If sales associates our operations and markets. Achieving this required
cannot locate certain parts within the Kelly us to make a change in our business software.”
Tractor Co. inventory, they try to source the part

“We felt that Microsoft Dynamics AX would
help us take the business to the next level, with the
only constraints being our own requirements.”

John Rose · Information Services Manager of Kelly Tractor Co.

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Kelly Tractor Co.