Simplified Orders, Faster Workflows: Power Platform Transforms Commodity Operations
What began as a homegrown system built to track orders and shipments had become a 20-year-old bottleneck. To keep pace with modern demands, an agricultural commodities company partnered with Stoneridge Software to reimagine and scale its operations with Microsoft Power Platform.
Built on Microsoft’s Power Platform and integrated with Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain, and industry add-on, Levridge, the new solution transformed how teams manage orders, contracts, credit approvals, and documentation. The result: a flexible, user-friendly application that simplifies day-to-day work for traders, assistants, and operations staff while connecting seamlessly to the company’s core ERP.
Business Challenges: Legacy processes and disconnected systems hindered efficiency across trading, finance, and logistics
As one of the nation’s leading agricultural commodity traders, the company buys and sells feed ingredients and other agricultural products to a broad range of clients — including food and beverage manufacturers, dairies, mills, aquaculture operations, and biofuel producers. They also repurpose by-products from food manufacturers, such as citrus pulp or whey, into new, marketable commodities.
Managing the flow of materials, pricing, contracts, and logistics across this complex supply chain required a reliable, flexible system. However, the company’s legacy “Track & Ship” system, built more than two decades ago, had become a barrier to efficiency and growth.
Key challenges included:
- Outdated custom software that couldn’t scale to handle the company’s expanding portfolio of products and trading partners.
- Disjointed processes between the legacy application and ERP, leading to manual data entry and reconciliation across sales, operations, and accounting.
- Limited flexibility in staging and managing orders — users needed to plan future orders without prematurely impacting financial or position data.
- Redundant documentation practices, requiring teams to track contracts, scale tickets, and delivery paperwork in multiple systems.
- User adoption barriers for non-ERP users like traders, assistants, and dispatchers who needed easy access to data without navigating complex ERP screens.
The company turned to Stoneridge Software to modernize these processes, streamline the order-to-cash cycle, and connect its trading and operations teams through an intuitive Power Platform solution.
Recommended Solution: A custom Power Platform app built for flexibility and growth
Stoneridge Software designed and implemented a custom Model-Driven App built on Microsoft Power Platform, addressing immediate needs while laying the foundation for scalable growth across the business.
Key solution components included:
- Order & Contract Management
Simplified order creation, staging, and copying — with new calendar functionality allowing hundreds of orders to be generated efficiently without impacting accounting data prematurely. - Integrated Document Repository
Consolidated backup tracker documents into one system. Users can now attach documents to contracts, orders, and accounts, with automation bundling files for invoices and remittance packages. - Credit Review & Mobile App
Integrated credit risk and hold data from Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain, giving credit teams mobile access for real-time review and release of held orders. - Scale Ticket Automation
Automated ticket creation and posting for intercompany and intracompany transfers, ensuring accurate GL postings tied to warehouse and product movements.
This Power Platform solution, enhanced with Azure Functions, Service Bus, and dual-write integration, connected operational users with ERP data, combining flexibility with financial governance and reliability.
“By leveraging Power Platform alongside Dynamics 365 and Azure, we helped the team modernize core business processes while improving user experience and control” says Reilly Mitchell, Solution Architect and Team Manager at Stoneridge Software.
Results: Connected systems and empowered teams across every department
With the new Power Platform application in place, the company transformed how its teams work day-to-day. Tasks that once required navigating multiple systems, emailing backup files, or waiting on ERP access are now completed in a few clicks. Using the Power Platform, information flows seamlessly between business applications, creating a clear line of sight from contract to cash.
The improvements were felt across departments:
- Sales, Traders, and Assistants now manage contracts and orders directly within a clean, purpose-built interface — reducing reliance on ERP and allowing them to stage or copy orders in seconds.
- Finance and Credit Teams gained automated visibility into credit holds and approvals through a mobile app, accelerating order review and maintaining stronger financial control.
- Operations and Dispatch teams can view and track pending orders, documents, and scale tickets in one place, eliminating duplicate steps and manual reconciliations.
- Company-wide Efficiency Gains: Automation replaced many manual handoffs, saving time and improving accuracy.
- Better User Experience: A modern, role-specific design increased adoption among both ERP and non-ERP users.
- Improved Financial Accuracy: Automated scale ticket generation and credit risk workflows ensured compliant accounting and consistent data across systems.
- Unified Data and Connected Systems: Integration between Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain created a single source of truth for contracts, orders, and accounting information.
By modernizing its legacy systems through Microsoft’s Power Platform and integrating it with Dynamics 365, the organization achieved the flexibility and visibility it needed to operate efficiently at scale. What began as a project to replace aging technology became a foundation for continued innovation magnified by Stoneridge Software’s ability to connect business processes, people, and data across the entire Microsoft business technology suite.
“This partnership showed how Power Platform, guided by an experienced Microsoft partner, can create immediate value and long-term scalability,” says Mitchell.
Technologies Used
Microsoft Power Platform
- Model-Driven Apps
- Power Automate
- PCF Controls
- Power Pages
Azure
- Azure Functions
- Azure Service Bus
Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain (with Levridge)
- Dual-write Integration
