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With customers ranging from the smallest local bakeries to national retailers and brands, it is an end-to-end and vertically integrated business that transforms Australian grains into iconic and much-loved household products.
Allied Pinnacle places the consumer at the heart of its business. With global and local demand for healthier food solutions rising, the health and wellbeing of every Australian is a key focus.
David Williams is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Allied Pinnacle. “We put the consumer at the centre of all our products and solutions. As leaders and innovators in flour, ingredients and bakery, we have a truly national footprint with a history steeped in a tradition of more than a century.”
By driving innovation in baking, Allied Pinnacle is creating the next generation of relevant, health-conscious products. An example of this is their Wise Wheat flour – a groundbreaking agricultural innovation. Wise Wheat is a naturally high-prebiotic-fibre flour that offers no compromise on taste or texture.
Technology needs to be the key enabler in the development of these innovative products. But, until recently, the business was being held back by an unreliable network and a legacy ERP solution. Firewalls frequently dropped out, outages were common, and existing providers failed to resolve core issues.
What the business needed was a trusted technology partner who could stabilise and simplify the network, modernise the infrastructure, and lay the foundational connectivity for a cloud-based ERP and OT integration. Allied Pinnacle’s objective was to pave the way for reliable connectivity, real-time data capture, and scalable innovation across its nationwide operations. To do this with certainty and confidence, they engaged with Tecala.
Michael Bevan is Information Technology Operations Manager at Allied Pinnacle. He explains: “Our first objective was to stabilise our network. We had a first-generation Juniper SD-WAN that had been implemented by our previous partners. Its configuration was unstable, leaving the business with around 89 percent network availability. The resulting multi-day outages we were experiencing were disrupting access to our enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform and halting our production.”
Tecala ran a network assessment which confirmed that the Juniper SRX series hardware could be retained, but the network design needed a complete overhaul. By moving Allied Pinnacle away from the existing Juniper Contrail Service Orchestration (CSO) platform and implementing a modern SD-WAN design, Tecala was able to increase network availability from approximately 89% to 99.999%.
The outcome was a significantly more resilient, reliable, and high-performing SD-WAN solution.
“Tecala was able to complete the network overhaul with such outstanding results because they had next-level expertise in Juniper technologies,” says Michael. “They approached things differently. From the results of the health check, they completely re-engineered our use of Juniper equipment.
“By reconfiguring the firewalls and significantly simplifying our network architecture, they brought order to the chaos,” he explains.
The most significant improvement was to simplify the network design by reducing the configuration on each device from 8,000-15,000 lines of code to mere hundreds.
“We simply didn’t have the knowledge and expertise to do this internally. Tecala recommended the changes, then expertly delivered them. They handled all configurations and stabilised the entire environment,” says Michael.
Michael Bevan, Information Technology Operations Manager – Allied Pinnacle
With the simplified network configuration improving stability and performance, Michael and David could start the next phase of the project: the migration of their legacy ERP to a modern cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform.
As a preliminary step to manage the migration, Tecala created a cloud-ready core by provisioning Azure Edge connectivity.
This was an important first step, because it ensured network performance and resilience were in place before migrating mission-critical ERP systems, reducing the risk of network failure and business disruption.
“This clearly demonstrated to us Tecala’s foresight and deep understanding of how infrastructure readiness underpins successful cloud transformation,” says Michael.
With the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP platform successfully installed, Allied Pinnacle now has a powerful digital backbone that connects every part of its business.
To understand how important this is, understand that Allied Pinnacle is a true paddock-to-plate business – partnering with wheat growers across multiple regions, then milling the wheat into high-quality flour, and delivering finished products to retail and business outlets across Australia.
At the heart of this complex, vertically integrated operation is its Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP platform. Thanks to Tecala’s expertise in optimising the network and managing the software migration, it can now perform to its true potential: as the engine that drives the business.
“The ERP platform now gives us the visibility and data we need to understand, improve, and grow,” explains David. “An ERP on its own delivers limited value. But when it’s integrated into our data across our high-performance network, with the right systems and analytics, it unlocks powerful, actionable insight. It becomes the foundation for performance – enabling better decision-making, stronger service levels, and the resilience we need to adapt and thrive,” he says.
Michael Bevan, Information Technology Operations Manager – Allied Pinnacle
With Allied Pinnacle’s network operating at peak performance, the challenge is now to keep it that way.
A recent Cable Cut in Picton created a significant impact to a large Allied Pinnacle Milling site. While Telstra lagged in response, Tecala had a team onsite within hours to deploy a satellite solution that restored connectivity and kept operations running.
This kind of fast, hands-on support is crucial for Allied Pinnacle, and it’s sparked broader conversations around resilience, business continuity, and using tools like Microsoft 365 to better identify and manage operational risk.
“One of the key challenges we face is having access to network support engineers in the event of a disaster,” explains Michael.
“In another instance, Tecala trialled a 4G solution to bridge some network gaps – not a perfect solution, but a proactive step to maintain uptime,” he recalls. “This is the kind of support we need — responsive, practical, and hands-on.”
“Solid platforms remove barriers to growth,” explains David. “With a scalable network and flexible ERP, our business can confidently extend to new sites, onboard teams, and scale with agility.
“We’ve already started early conversations with Tecala about what our future network model should look like. Over the next five years, we’ll evolve to a more structured, segmented approach. This will include new subnets and a more deliberate network architecture,” he says.
“Ultimately, it’s the network that binds our IoT environment together – feeding data into the ERP platform and enabling senior leadership to make smarter, faster decisions based on real-time operational insight,” says David.
Michael adds, “With a smarter network in place, we can do far more with our Operational Technology, like deploying sensors, capturing data from production environments, and integrating that insight directly into the ERP system.”
“There are ongoing discussions about how we can better utilise the network to generate richer data points. This includes things like temperature, humidity, and other process indicators,” he says. “We already do some of this internally, but our goal is to scale and connect these systems to centralised databases that track product behaviour across every stage in real time.”
Thanks to a genuine two-way partnership that’s developed between Tecala and Allied Pinnacle, Michael and David have been able to drive a genuine transformation in the business. Starting with a stable network at the core, Allied Pinnacle is now able to add layers of technology to support the business as it continues to grow and evolve.
This kind of continuous innovation is only possible when visionary technology leaders like Michael and David are able to work side-by-side with a trusted technology partner.
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