Montague Company, a long-established U.S. manufacturer of commercial kitchen appliances, has completed a sweeping IT overhaul, retiring its decades-old PICK-based enterprise resource planning system and moving to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The move—bolstered by Azure cloud services and Power Platform tools—marks a dramatic leap from a niche, character-based environment to a modern, connected manufacturing ERP.
For over 30 years, Montague relied on a PICK system originally deployed in the 1990s. That platform, known for its MultiValue database and green-screen terminals, handled core business operations but became a bottleneck as the company pursued growth and agility. Inventory tracking, production scheduling, and financial reporting required manual workarounds, and the system could not integrate with contemporary shop-floor or e-commerce tools.
The tipping point came when Montague’s leadership recognized that maintaining the aging infrastructure was not only costly but also a competitive risk. “We were fighting the system to get basic visibility into orders and materials,” a company spokesperson said during a post-migration briefing. “Modern manufacturing demands real-time data, and the PICK platform simply couldn’t deliver.”
The Migration Path: From Green Screens to the Cloud
Montague’s IT team, working with a Microsoft partner, mapped out a phased transition to Dynamics 365 Business Central. The goal was to minimize disruption while moving financials, supply chain, manufacturing, and service management onto a single, unified platform.
Business Central’s native manufacturing module was a key draw. It handles production orders, bill of materials, capacity planning, and machine-level costing out of the box. For Montague, this eliminated the need for custom-coded solutions that had been layered onto the PICK system over the years. The migration also consolidated data that had been scattered across spreadsheets and shadow IT databases.
Critical to the success of the project was Azure. Montague leveraged Azure SQL Database as the back-end data store, giving them elastic scalability and built-in high availability. Azure Active Directory now governs identity and access, replacing a patchwork of local user accounts and password lists that had accumulated over two decades. The shift to cloud infrastructure also removed the burden of maintaining on-premises servers and nightly backup tapes.
Power Platform Adds Agility at the Edge
What truly differentiates the new setup is the tight integration with Microsoft’s low-code Power Platform. Montague deployed Power Apps to build custom interfaces for the shop floor—tablet-based check-ins for machine operators, simple quality inspection forms, and a maintenance request app that feeds directly into Business Central’s service module.
Power Automate flows now orchestrate cross-departmental processes. When a sales order exceeds a certain value, an automated approval workflow triggers notifications to the sales manager and finance lead. Once approved, the order automatically generates a production BOM and reschedules machine capacity. Previously, this sequence involved emails, phone calls, and a data entry clerk manually creating jobs in the PICK system.
Power BI dashboards give Montague’s executives a real-time view of operational metrics—on-time delivery, scrap rates, inventory turns—displayed on wall-mounted screens in the production office. Data refreshes every 15 minutes from Business Central via Azure Data Lake, a stark contrast to the end-of-day batch reports of the PICK era.
Cloud Security Overhaul
Security was a major driver for the project. The legacy PICK environment had minimal auditing, no multi-factor authentication, and remote access was limited to a cumbersome VPN solution. Montague’s new architecture leans heavily on Azure’s security stack. Conditional Access policies in Azure AD enforce MFA and device compliance for any employee connecting to Business Central. Privileged Identity Management (PIM) provides just-in-time access for IT staff, and Azure Sentinel monitors for anomalous activity across the tenant.
Data protection has been strengthened with Azure Information Protection labels applied to sensitive documents such as engineering drawings and supplier contracts. All email traffic now flows through Microsoft Defender for Office 365, which Montague activated as part of the broader Microsoft 365 deployment. The result is a layered defense that meets both corporate governance goals and the increasing security demands of supply-chain partners.
Tangible Benefits on the Factory Floor
Six months after go-live, Montague reports a 40% reduction in order-to-ship lead times. Real-time inventory visibility allows the purchasing team to optimize stock levels and reduce carrying costs. Production planners can now simulate schedule changes and immediately see the impact on delivery dates, a capability that simply didn’t exist before.
Employee feedback has been surprisingly positive for a company that used the same system for decades. “The learning curve was real, but once operators saw they could scan a barcode with a tablet and have the data flow straight into the system, they were excited,” noted the production manager. The Power Apps interfaces were designed with input from floor supervisors, ensuring they mirror the physical layout of the plant.
Financially, the move to a subscription-based SaaS model has converted a large, unpredictable capital expenditure into a predictable operational cost. Montague no longer pays for annual PICK license maintenance or specialized MultiValue developers. Instead, the IT team focuses on continuous improvement, building new Power Apps and tweaking Business Central extensions.
Integration with the Windows Ecosystem
Because Montague runs a Windows-based client environment, the synergy with Microsoft’s cloud stack is seamless. Employees access Business Central through the modern web client or dedicated Windows app. Single sign-on means one set of credentials unlocks email, files, ERP, and the custom shop-floor apps. For IT administrators, managing devices and users through Microsoft Intune aligns with the Azure AD identity backbone.
Windows Autopilot now provisions new PCs for remote employees, automatically enrolling them into management and pushing the required apps and policies. This was a pipe dream under the old PICK system, where every new workstation required manual setup and configuration of terminal emulators.
Lessons Learned and Future Plans
Montague’s modernization offers a blueprint for other mid-sized manufacturers stuck on obsolete platforms. The company emphasized that executive sponsorship was critical; having the CFO and COO actively champion the project kept momentum steady. Thorough data cleansing—weeding out duplicate customer records, inconsistent part numbers, and obsolete routings—consumed more effort than initially planned, but the team insists it was worth it to avoid migrating garbage.
Looking ahead, Montague is exploring IoT integration. The company plans to connect key production machines to Azure IoT Hub, streaming live telemetry into a Power BI dashboard that overlays machine performance on top of production orders. They are also evaluating AI-driven demand forecasting via Business Central’s built-in Azure Machine Learning integration, which could further reduce inventory waste.
Montague’s journey from a niche, 1990s-era PICK system to a cloud-native Dynamics 365 environment demonstrates that even deeply entrenched legacy platforms can give way to modern, secure, and connected ERP. For the company, the upgrade is more than a technology swap—it’s a foundation for growth in an increasingly digital manufacturing landscape.