Nufarm commits to global Salesforce rollout

ASX-listed agricultural chemical company Nufarm has committed to a global rollout of Salesforce's CRM system following successful deployments in Australia and Brazil.

The Melbourne-based company has a global workforce of around 3400 employees and operates across six continents. It specialises in agricultural crop protection and seed technologies.

The firm is currently running an ongoing program aimed at cost savings and performance improvement.

At its core, the program involves the integration of Nufarm's supply chains across the countries it operates in, while also introducing more effective purchasing practices.

Nufarm is hoping the overall project will deliver net benefit of $100 million in underlying EBIT by the end of financial year 2018.

The effort will require investments in new systems and IT capabilities, the company told investors late last week, including the adoption of a new CRM system globally.

It said it found the recent implementation of the Salesforce CRM in Australia and Brazil had contributed directly to margin improvements in those regions.

As such, it decided to roll out the system more widely in other markets over the next two years in hopes of the same result.

A spokesperson told iTnews Nufarm previously did not have a standardised CRM system in place globally, with some divisions relying on manual processes and spreadsheets to keep track of customers.

“As a group, we’re trying to standardise a lot more of our IT environment. Going forward, that means we will be using Salesforce.”

Nufarm is also looking to overhaul its supply chain management systems, although the company has declined to disclose any further details of the project at this stage.

According to a document sighted by iTnews, Nufarm currently uses a range of different ERP systems across its overseas subsidiaries.

These include Oracle in North America; a mix of Datasol and Oracle EBS in Latin America; SAP and Ross ERP in Europe; JD Edwards’ EnterpriseOne in Australia and two separate ERP systems in Asia.

Nufarm expects the costs of the systems overhaul will be fully offset by the savings generated by the wider program of works - which has already reaped savings of $15 million in FY15, and a further $20m expected for FY16.