Innovative Packaging Company Unleashes Power of Data with Crestwood Associates and Acumatica

Overview

Green Bay Packaging is a sustainably-minded, full services packaging company. They offer innovative corrugated packaging, folded cartons and coated label stock. As one of the few remaining packaging companies to own the forest from which they gather the raw materials for their products, Green Bay Packaging has fully vertical operations.

A culture of innovation supports creative and talented employees. They work for Green Bay Packaging customers first and foremost, focusing on developing inventive and economical solutions. All operations are driven by continuous improvement and are dedicated to providing their customers with outstanding service while maintaining a strong commitment to environmental and social stewardship.

This sense of mission guides the company to develop methods that increase manufacturing efficiency and product quality across all 44 business units.

Situation

Green Bay Packaging, a third-generation, family-owned company, manufactures high-quality products used for a wide variety of packaging and applications. The vertically integrated company owns 250,000 acres of timberlands in Arkansas that supply pulp to their two paper mills. The mills then supply cardboard products to 15 different corrugated box plants,  producing everything from product labels to shipping containers. They needed an ERP system that would allow insight to financial data in real-time, that was user-friendly across the business.

Green Bay Packaging had the problem of integrating disparate business systems and financial software into a single enterprise system that was both fast and user-friendly. The financial modules in their legacy system were over 30 years old and especially difficult to manage. They needed increased visibility into financial data, but it was often difficult to locate, if not inaccessible.

As a decentralized organization with four business units across three dozen sites, a corporate function and two paper mills, they needed a flexible system that each could run with ease and transparency. Financial reporting to that point was batch process-driven, consuming hours of unnecessary time.  

Solution

The Crestwood Associates team assessed their systems and immediately understood the need to pull data from the disparate platforms and migrate all information into Acumatica.

Jason Briesemeister, Green Bay Packaging’s Corporate Director of Accounting, reports, “A key sort of ‘a-ha’ moment was when Crestwood showed us what Acumatica can do, we knew this was really going to change our lives.” As modules are built, integrations between accounts receivable and accounts payable allow finance teams to get the data they need, when they need it. Teams in all the different locations can react immediately to any issues with orders, inventory or sales, reducing any impact on the customer experience.

Benefits of Acumatica

Acumatica helps Green Bay Packaging make better decisions: Executives have increased visibility across all operating entities and access to real time data at their fingertips. Employees no longer worry about cumbersome report generation or using hours of their time because those with role-based permissions can run their own reports, thanks to Acumatica’s ease of use. The finance team is now more responsive to leadership because Acumatica provides the ability to run real-time financial snapshots instantly.

The old process involved a Green Bay Packaging finance team member looking through a manual financial statement. If there were any questions about the data, multiple queries in different screens were required. Each invoice took up to 10 minutes to review.

Visibility between units is now possible. Previously, the box plant could not see data within the mill’s system, causing a disconnect and delays in serving customers. Having all of the company’s data in one system allows everyone to be proactive in addressing issues.

With Acumatica, users can drill down through the invoice in a matter of seconds. Employees have more time to invest in understanding financial results. More analysis has led to a better understanding of the overall financial picture. Further, the accounting team is able to do more than spend all their time putting financial statements together. Instead, they are becoming partners in business development, telling Green Bay Packaging’s story throughout the organization.

Briesemeister adds, “Training was actually much easier than I was anticipating because the system is very intuitive.” He reports that his teams learned Acumatica quickly, through Crestwood Associates’ expertise and training acumen.

“From the financial standpoint it’s a little bit not as exciting as some of the other modules maybe, but it is a big deal for us, to get that visibility and I think post implementation we’re going to be in a great spot,” says Briesemeister.

For more on the success of this ambitious project, read “Why Green Bay Packaging turned to cloud ERP in a pandemic economy” from the 2022 Acumatica Summit, featuring an interview with Jason Briesemeister.