Hills taps Microsoft for CRM and ERP

Home technology solutions company Hills Limited has replaced Salesforce with Microsoft as its provider of back-office customer relations management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) functions.

Hills will adopt the Microsoft Dynamics platform for both back-office functions as part of a strategy to consolidate to a single cloud-based platform.

The company is also replacing its excess of suppliers with a smaller number of strategic partners. For example, Telstra will provide network and communications services for the company and Dell will provide computing hardware.

Hills CEO David Lenz said the project will be completed in stages. During the first phase, Hills will work with a number of Microsoft Dynamics partners to roll out the CRM system, while during the second the company will seek to consolidate and replace its current four separate ERPs with Dynamics 365.

“Hills has grown through acquisition and has inherited a variety of ERP and CRM systems that are not able to deliver the long-term value that the organisation requires,” he said. “By consolidating suppliers and streamlining information systems, we’ll achieve world-class scalable, real-time software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies across all Hills ANZ locations. The Microsoft Dynamics ERP & CRM SaaS model is scalable and together with Microsoft 365 gives us a complete end-to-end business technology stack without having to invest heavily in infrastructure.”

Hills expects the deployment to help it achieve operational expenditure savings of over $1.8 million per year.

Hills was originally established in 1948 to sell the iconic Hills Hoist rotary clothes line developed by Lance Hill. The company has since expanded into areas including electronics, security, entertainment and communications systems.

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