Microsoft Business Solutions
Customer Solution Case Study
Land O’Lakes Links Customers with Suppliers,
Completing Project in Only Seven Months
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Wholesale and Distribution
Customer Profile
Land O’Lakes, a Minnesota-based national
food and agricultural cooperative with more
than 6,000 producers and 1,300
cooperatives in its membership, had net
earnings of U.S.$84 million in 2003.
Business Situation
With the consolidation of the pork
production market, Land O’Lakes needed
to expand its business with large pork
producers by seeking a solution to both aid
producers and extend its own market
share.
Solution
To streamline feed production and
distribution, the cooperative put in place a
solution based on Microsoft® Business
Solutions–Great Plains® and Feed Mill
Manager software from Feed Management
Systems.
Benefits
 Implemented solution in only seven
months
 Increased efficiency for producers
 Ensured compliance with food safety
rules
 Helped ensure optimal feed nutrition
“This is a solution we can expand upon. In spite of the
complex number of variables, it’s easy to set up and
modify. And because it’s based on Microsoft
technology, our customers have confidence in it.”
Greg Gniffke, Director of the Integrated Service Bureau, for the Swine Division, Land O’Lakes
Known for its dairy products, Land O’Lakes, a food and agricultural
cooperative listed in the Fortune 500, also sells feed to the pork
industry. To increase its business with large pork producers, Land
O’Lakes sought to create an integrated feed management system
for these customers, linking them to suppliers affiliated with Land
O’Lakes. With the help of Feed Management Systems, Land
O’Lakes set up a solution based on Microsoft® Business Solutions–
Great Plains® software in only seven months. Now, Land O’Lakes
customers can get a consistent nutritional feed mix—which is
critical to food safety—and track exactly what each pig eats
throughout its life. The solution simplifies ordering and billing for
producers, thereby lowering their costs, while helping Land O’Lakes
increase its business.
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Greg Gniffe, Director of the Integrated Service
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Bureau for the Swine Division, Land O'Lakes
Joel Dekkers, Director of North American
Sales, Feed Management Systems
Situation
Food and agricultural cooperative Land
O’Lakes, a Fortune 500 company, is
headquartered in Arden Hills, Minnesota.
Land O’Lakes is owned by—and serves—more
than 5,000 members and 1,200 community
cooperatives. With a name recognized mostly
for dairy products, Land O’Lakes is also one
of the top feed manufacturers in the United
States, marketing feed for dairy, beef, poultry,
and swine producers. In 2003, the
cooperative’s net income reached U.S.$83.5
million.
As the pork production market has
consolidated over the past few years—50
large producers now control 50 percent of the
pork market—and the number of small
producers has declined, Land O’Lakes
executives sought to increase the
cooperative’s presence among large
producers with more than 15,000 breeding
sows. Land O’Lakes executives believed that
identifying the needs of these customers and
meeting them would help the cooperative
capture more business.
maintain the best nutritional mix for their pigs
at the most competitive cost. But not all
ingredients are necessarily available at every
mill, and even when they are available, they
can fluctuate drastically in price. For
example, soybean meal, a common feed
ingredient, has ranged from $180 a ton to
$320 a ton in a 14-month period.
In addition, a pig can have 12 different diets
over its life cycle, and diets can change
weekly. Most pork producers want to know
the pricing for the diets of all their pigs on
Thursday of each week, so that if new
formulas are required, they can be in place
on Monday.
Pork producers are also concerned with food
safety. “Food safety today is linked to feed
safety,” says Gniffke. “Producers need a way
to track exactly what each pig ate at every
stage of its life.”
To expand its market share among the large
pork producers, Land O’Lakes decided to:
Create an integrated feed system linking its
customers—the large pork producers—and
the suppliers—the toll mills—with Land
O’Lakes to deliver nutritional feed at a
cost-effective price no matter where the
pigs are raised.
 Provide producers with an audit trail
tracing what each animal eats every week.
 Give producers visibility into the feed
system to make ordering easier, while
simplifying accounting and invoicing, and
ensuring the security of sensitive pricing
data.

“It’s a complicated market to serve,” says
Greg Gniffke, Director of the Integrated
Service Bureau for the Swine Division at Land
O’Lakes. “Large pork producers have some
unique requirements.” Land O’Lakes
identified several key needs of these
prospective customers, including ensuring
optimal feed nutrition across a wide
geographic area, meeting standards for food
safety, and streamlining the order, delivery,
and billing processes.
The first requirement—ensuring optimal feed
nutrition across a wide geographic area—
arises because pork producers buy their feed
from locally owned feed mills, also called toll
mills. If a large producer has to provide food
to contract pork growers in several states, it
may do business with as many as 25
different toll mills. Producers want to
Because no other feed company offered a
solution like the one Land O’Lakes
envisioned, the cooperative also wanted to
implement the solution quickly to gain a
competitive advantage.
Solution
“The large pork
producers won’t even
consider going to a
solution like this unless
they can see a minimum
of a two-to-one return on
their investment. We
believe they will achieve
that return.”
Greg Gniffe, Director of the Integrated Service
Bureau for the Swine Division, Land O'Lakes
Land O’Lakes worked with Feed Management
Systems (FMS)—a Microsoft® Certified
Business Solutions Partner. FMS is an
application software company that provides a
complete information management solution
for the commercial feed industry. FMS
set up a software solution to meet the needs
the company had identified. Land O’Lakes
planned to offer the solution through its new
Integrated Service Bureau, its network of toll
mills and large pork producers.

FMS was a logical choice as a partner for
developing a solution. Land O’Lakes already
uses other FMS software, and the software
company’s Brill Formulation program for
calculating feed nutrition and costs is an
industry standard. More than 4,000 feedindustry users rely on FMS products,
representing a significant percentage of the
worldwide commercial feed industry. So when
Gniffke reviewed Feed Mill Manager from
FMS, a product based on Microsoft® Business
Solutions–Great Plains® version 7.5
enterprise resource planning (ERP) software,
he believed it would deliver the solution that
Land O’Lakes was seeking.

Initial conversations between FMS and Land
O’Lakes took place in March 2003, and in
June 2003, Land O’Lakes first licensed the
Corporate Feed Mill Manager software. In
November 2003, with development
continuing, Land O’Lakes deployed the feed
management system in two test
environments—first at its own internal model
feed mills and then to its own swine
production unit of 30,000 sows.
The Microsoft Great Plains–based integrated
solution that FMS developed for Land
O’Lakes incorporates the following:

Corporate Feed Mill Manager software,
which Land O’Lakes runs at its corporate
headquarters




Feed Mill Manager, the software used by
the participating toll mills
Brill Formulation software, which calculates
the nutritional mix and costs for specific
diets
A third-party Web application for producers
to use in ordering feed
Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000, which stores
the formula—or diet—database for each
group of animals receiving the feed
Integrated third-party financial software for
automated invoicing
Software modules provided with Microsoft
Great Plains for purchase ordering
processing, sales order processing, and
inventory management
“Feed Mill Manager was a good choice for
Land O’Lakes,” says Joel Dekkers, Director of
North American Sales for Feed Management
Systems. “Because it’s based on Microsoft
Great Plains, it easily supports the integration
of the complementary applications and the
customizations that Land O’Lakes needed—
and it could be set up quickly.”
Another important concern for Land O’Lakes
was ensuring the security of proprietary data
stored in the system, such as pricing
information; Feed Mill Manager fulfilled that
need, too. “By using the security built into
Microsoft Great Plains and SQL Server 2000,
Land O’Lakes can protect both its information
and that of its customers,” says Dekkers.
Customers never directly access Land
O’Lakes servers; instead, they send
information by File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to
an FTP site at Land O’Lakes, where the
information is uploaded to the feed
management system.
After completing development in January
2004, Land O’Lakes brought 30 feed mills
onto the feed management system. Now, toll
mills enter ingredient availability and prices
into the system on Thursday; the Brill
Formulation software calculates the cost of
each diet; the data is analyzed by a PhD
nutritionist—at either Land O’Lakes or the
producer’s facility; and pork producers then
view the data and place an order. The system
sends the order to the toll mills, which then
produce the feed and deliver it to the
locations where the pigs are raised—with new
diets in place by Monday morning. The feed
management system can also automatically
generate invoices.
unless they can see a minimum of a two-toone return on their investment,” says Gniffke.
“We believe they will achieve that return.”
Benefits
The simplification of billing has provided an
advantage to the toll mills as well. They also
expect to see increased efficiency and
savings from their participation in the
Integrated Service Bureau.
The implementation of the Microsoft Great
Plains–based solution has delivered
advantages to Land O’Lakes customers, toll
mills, and the cooperative itself by providing
an integrated feed management solution that
allows for the quick transfer of reliable data.
Advantages to Producers and Toll Mills
For large pork producers participating in the
Integrated Service Bureau, the software
provides a comprehensive solution that the
producers would have found almost
impossible to develop on their own. The
Microsoft Great Plains–based solution:
Ensures that producers get the best
nutritional mix each week at a competitive
cost.
 Provides an audit trail.
 Offers transparency into the feed supply
chain—producers can view toll mill
information and easily place orders.
 Protects producers’ proprietary
information—participants cannot view other
companies’ data or the cooperative’s own
data.
 Simplifies accounting and invoicing with
automatic invoice generation and
communication with the third-party
financial software, thereby reducing
administrative time and costs.
As a result of the Feed Mill Manager solution,
producers expect to see considerable
savings. “The large pork producers won’t
even consider going to a solution like this
Producers are also freed from the timeconsuming tasks and expense of setting up
their own systems. “The solution lets
producers focus on their businesses, while
the Integrated Service Bureau manages the
technology and accounting,” says Dekkers.
Advantages to Land O’Lakes
Land O’Lakes set up the Microsoft Great
Plains–based solution in only seven months.
The quick time-to-market helped Land
O’Lakes become a market leader in creating
a comprehensive feed management system.
The solution has also helped Land O’Lakes
build close relationships with both the pork
producers and the toll mills, which it expects
will eventually result in even more business.

By using the Microsoft Great Plains–based
solution, Land O’Lakes created a common
solution for all the participants in the
Integrated Service Bureau. “If we had to deal
with 20 different systems, we couldn’t have
achieved this level of integration or ease of
use,” says Gniffke. “But because the solution
is Microsoft-based, our customers and toll
mills find it fits readily into their existing
computing environment, as we do.”
For example, by using the SmartList feature
in Microsoft Great Plains, data—for example,
weekly pricing information—can be exported
into a Microsoft Office Excel 2002
spreadsheet that can be sent to a customer
or used for individual analyses without
compromising the security of the feed
management system.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Feed
Management Systems products and
services, call (763)560-8139 or visit the
Web site at:
www.feedsys.com
Microsoft Business Solutions
Also, because the Microsoft Great Plains–
based solution makes it easy to integrate
third-party applications, Land O’Lakes not
only easily incorporated the third-party Web
application and a company’s financial
software into the solution, but it also gained
the tools to extend the feed management
system’s capabilities in the future.
Microsoft Business Solutions offer integrated
business applications and services that allow
small and midsize organizations and divisions
of large enterprises to connect employees,
customers, and suppliers for improved
efficiency. The financial management,
customer relationship management, supply
chain management, and analytics
applications work with other Microsoft
software, including the Microsoft Office
System and the Microsoft Windows®
operating system, to streamline processes
across an entire organization. This gives
businesses insight to respond rapidly, plan
strategically, and execute quickly. Microsoft
Business Solutions are delivered through a
worldwide network of channel partners that
provide specialized services and local support
tailored to a company’s needs.
As the solution continues to roll out, Gniffke
projects that the feed management system at
Land O’Lakes eventually will be expanded to
other areas, such as the poultry industry.
“This is a solution we can expand upon,” says
Gniffke. “In spite of the complex number of
variables, it’s easy to set up and modify. And
because it’s based on Microsoft technology,
our customers have confidence in it.”
For more information about Microsoft
Business Solutions, go to:
www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions
For more information about Land O’Lakes
products and services, call (651) 4812222 or visit the Web site at:
www.landolakesinc.com
Software and Services
Hardware
Microsoft Windows Server SystemTM
− Microsoft SQL Server 2000
 Microsoft Business Solutions–Great
Plains 7.5


© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Great Plains, Windows, and Windows Server System
are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation or Great Plains Software, Inc. in the United States
and/or other countries. Great Plains Software, Inc. is a wholly
owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. The names of actual
companies and products mentioned herein may be the
trademarks of their respective owners.
Document published November 2004
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