The past three years have been transformative for Hokitika-based dairy company Westland Milk, one of New Zealand’s largest dairy processors. Until its sale to Yili in 2019, Westland ran as a cooperative, owned by its farming shareholders. In its first two years of private ownership, the business posted losses of $60 million, and then $80 million, with similar losses borne by farmer-shareholders in previous years, by way of lower payouts than the wider market offered. But since then, Westland Milk has undergone a phenomenal programme of change, and in 2022 it delivered an incredible $120 million profit turnaround, followed by another highly profitable year in 2023.
“The turnaround has been unreal – a $120 million change in profit position delivered in one year, followed by sustainably improving profits each year since” says Hamish Yates, General Manager Sales and Marketing for Westland Milk. “It’s been incredible to be part of this journey. We used to have a history of losing money. Now we have well over $1 billion in revenue, we export to more than 40 countries, and our Westgold brand is in grocery retail and food service around the globe.”
With the business experiencing such rapid change, the Westland leadership team knew their systems needed to be able keep up with the company’s success. There was no CRM at all, with the sales team reliant on a patchwork of apps and programmes to do deals and store data – WhatsApp, Excel, Outlook. There was no central repository of customer information, and no consistency of customer experience when ordering.
“Westland Milk Products, as we know it today, is more than 80 years old, so we relied heavily on people’s memories and whatever historic files we could find,” explains Yates. “Now we’re in a new world. Our product mix changes frequently to adapt to global dynamics in the dairy industry. We are constantly optimising based on those fundamentals, so we needed a CRM that could be nimble and allow us to pursue new opportunities quickly and efficiently, as they come up.”
At Westland, they look at a bucket of milk and ask: ‘What’s the most valuable combination of finished goods that we can make from this?’ When the answer changes, which it does often, Westland needs to get in touch with its customers – both current and former – to let them know what’s on offer. A good CRM was essential, so Westland went to market with an RFP, and ultimately chose Datacom to deliver cloud-based CRM Microsoft Dynamics 365.
“Datacom stood out in the RFP process as really listening to our brief,” Yates says. “It was evident that the others had turned up to roll out the same old spiel, but Datacom understood our needs. Their solution was very personalised, bespoke and well considered.”
Once the RFP was over, it took around 12 months to go live with the new system. Westland Milk is now well down the road to feeding the CRM with all customer data, can start to see the sales pipelines, and get valuable insights into each stage of the sales process. Using its new CRM will also reduce errors due to ensuring consistent customer and order-specific data across all order fulfilment teams, boosting customer satisfaction.
“We pride ourselves on being easy to do business with,” says Yates. “We need to be easy and approachable in how we operate, so even if customers still want to confirm their orders by WhatsApp with their Account Manager, they’ll now also receive a formal and standardised offer via the CRM system, and the order fulfilment journey starts. It lifts our professionalism, captures all our offers being made, and helps us better understand the pipeline.”
It’s been five months so far, and the team at Westland is still working closely with Datacom to get the most out of the new CRM.
“Datacom has been fantastic, engaging directly with the people using it on a daily basis,” Yates says. “We’re fine tuning to get the system honed, and Datacom has been very engaged and keen to ensure that it works. The new CRM is not a magic bullet – the value is all in the data you put into it, and this is a long-term play.”
Datacom’s Rowland Parr, GM Business Platforms, says the Westland Milk team were great to work with from the start and were really open to talking through different solution options to achieve the right outcome.
“Throughout our process we were able to simplify the solution by minimising integrations with other key systems and by initially really focusing on a core MVP solution. We then identified smart ways to re-use existing Westland Milk PowerBI reports that could be easily embedded into the solution via out of the box methods. This savvy approach maximised their business useability and impact, while significantly reducing project costs and complexity.”
Westland is now working on the next stage of the rollout, where it seeks real-time feedback from customers. That will help the business improve its customer experience and maintain its high standard of service. From there, the plan is to add new modules to the CRM that will help Westland maintain its momentum.
“We can start to elevate our brand communications with new marketing tools,” says Yates. “We can focus on digital channels and find audiences we haven’t spoken to before in this way, like food service professionals. There’s also amazing AI technology that can understand the sentiment of the customer. There are some really exciting things in the future, and once we get those tools on board, our ability to engage will be amazing.”
After an incredible few years of success, Westland is well on track to quietly turning itself into a global leader in premium dairy products. Yates is modest about the company’s success, but notes that Westland has a considerable impact on the GDP of the West Coast region, despite not being a household name like some of its competitors.
“We’re a little sleeper company – we just get on with it and do a good job, and we hold our own.”
