Businesses are migrating to cloud-based solutions at a rapid pace. As per a report by Gartner, 60% of organizations will deploy cloud-based ERP by 2024.
Gartner analyzed various cloud-based business management solutions available in the market and chose Microsoft as a leader for 2nd year in a row. It recognized Dynamics 365 as suitable for midsize, large, and global enterprises that need specific regional and industry capabilities.
Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central is an integrated cloud-based business management solution that enables organizations to connect business-wide operations. Dynamics 365 Business Central offers numerous benefits to an organization. Let us look at some of them.
Following are the benefits of implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central for your organization:
Dynamics 365 Business Central is not heavy on the purse and can help small and medium-sized businesses efficiently manage their expenses. Also, the cloud-based version of Business Central requires less spending on IT infrastructure, has no maintenance cost, and is manageable with a lean IT team.
A company may pay a monthly subscription fee for the number of user licences and prevent any heavy monetary investment upfront.
Business Central’s cloud-based version allows employees to access their data from an internet-enabled device from any location and at any time. It is beneficial for a company with a distributed workforce.
Business Central is an integrated platform connecting all the teams across sales, service, finance, and operations. It can act as an ERP as well as a CRM.
It has AI and ML capabilities which can help sales professionals prioritize prospects and provide them insights into various upselling, cross-selling, or renewal opportunities throughout the customer life cycle.
Business Central helps marketing teams to create various customer segments and customize their marketing campaigns.
The customer service teams can access customer data in just a few clicks and can help resolve issues or queries quickly. All in all, it’s a solution that is beneficial for each department.
Business Central provides financial capabilities which go far beyond just being accounting software. It supports multiple languages and multi-currency transactions.
It adheres to international financial standards, including DPR, IAS/IFRS and SOX. It is beneficial for a company with a multi-location set-up as it can help them manage compliance and tax regulations across different countries.
Read More – Benefits of Business central for financial services
Business Central can help companies to forecast future demands and manage their supply chain accordingly. It can also keep track of SKUs across different outlets and locations and order an item from a specific vendor at a definite price as soon as the stock goes below a pre-determined level.
Business Central can assist in stock placements per the warehouse layout and structure, create documentation for various departments, create order despatch lists per purchase orders, etc.
Business Central can help companies track resource capacity, usage, and allocation across projects. It enables companies to track job usage and invoice their customers for fixed-price or time and materials jobs. It also provides a real-time project status that users can share using reporting tools.
Each department within an organization can generate, capture, store, analyze, and share data with different teams preventing any data silo creation. The data is updated in real-time and can be shared with others. Users require limited to no technical expertise to create reports and share them with key decision-makers for analysis.
Business Central has numerous advanced security features and user access mechanisms ensuring data security and preventing unauthorized data access.
Microsoft AppSource is a marketplace consisting of thousands of popular business applications compatible with Business Central. A company can use these applications to create a further capable instance of Business Central per their requirements and specifications.
Also, Business Central is compatible with other Microsoft products like Power BI, Azure, Office 365, etc.
These are only some of the benefits. For more details, read our blog “Top 10 Reasons Why Migrate to Dynamics 365 Business Central”.
It is crucial to plan Business Central implementation rigorously to ensure its success. It is a business-wide change and can lead to massive losses if it fails. As per McKinsey reports, 75% of ERP projects fail to stay on schedule or within budget, and 66% have a negative return on investment. A well-planned implementation reduces the risk of failure.
Let us look at the step-by-step Business Central implementation process a company should follow.
Companies sometimes make changes because others are doing so without thorough analysis. A company should clearly define the reason it wants to implement Business Central and the goals it wants to achieve post-implementation. A company risks an implementation failure if it does not have a clear answer to “Why we should implement Business Central?”
A company should audit its current operations, systems, and processes. It should identify areas functioning as expected, ones requiring minor changes, and ones requiring a complete overhaul.
A complete department-wide study and analysis are critical to identifying the bottlenecks, multiple data formats, process variances, third-party solutions used, redundant processes or systems, synergies to be achieved etc., across the business.
The company should analyse and determine the deployment model per their business requirements and specifications. Companies with multiple locations should consider compliances, guidelines, and regulatory policies across these different locations to select a suitable deployment model.
Below is a comparison of the on-premise and cloud-based Business Central versions.
Cloud-Based | On-premise |
Data hosted on Microsoft servers | Data hosted on the company’s infrastructure |
Monthly subscription licensing fees | One-time perpetual fees for licenses |
Manageable with a lean IT team | Needs a strong IT team with diverse skill sets |
Develop unlimited customizations without any additional cost | Purchase additional Object licenses for customization |
Automatic updates by Microsoft | Manual Updates managed and implemented by the company’s IT team |
Power BI is pre-configured and is a part of the Business Central subscription | Purchase separate Power BI pro licenses. The company’s IT team will have to configure it. |
Pre-configured Power Apps integration | Power Apps integration is not available. |
Microsoft manages data storage, backup, recovery, and security. | The company’s internal IT team manages it. |
The Business Central implementation project plan should outline the deployment model, business requirements, goals, duration, critical milestones, budget and other resource requirements, and a contingency plan.
It should also consist of a change management plan, including a communication strategy to manage and handle employee interactions and queries about upcoming changes.
A company should identify and appoint the right people to drive the project. The company should create a cross-functional team with members from different departments since the implementation will impact all departments. A top management executive should lead the team. It enables quick decision-making and conveys to everyone about the project’s importance.
A company should also have a data migration plan to prevent data loss or data corruption, reduce data redundancy and improve data access across the company.
A company should also outline interim steps and strategies it will adopt till the successful implementation and adoption of Business Central is complete. The plan should also outline evaluation parameters that will help determine the success or failure of the project.
Read more – Importance of Top management in ERP Implementation
As mentioned, the company must appoint the right people with the necessary skill sets. The company should realign job responsibilities and change organizational structure, if need be, to allocate the right people.
If the company does not have the skillsets internally, it can hire people or outsource it to an experienced partner with a proven track record of successful Business Central implementation.
Necessary budgetary allocations should be made to ensure that the project moves ahead without interruption.
This step includes Business Central’s deployment and development. The company has already defined milestones in their planning stages and should start with the most critical aspects.
The team should undertake integrations with third-party applications, legacy systems, or other native Microsoft products in this phase. They should also manage any customizations w.r.t. the workflows, systems, processes, reporting, etc., in this phase.
Data migration is a critical step in this phase. Each department might process data differently, use different data formats, or use separate systems to manage it.
During the data migration process, the team should manage data duplication issues, tackle data redundancy, ensure accurate data is available in desired data formats, and ensure business-wide data consistency by cleaning up data without affecting data accuracy. It can be complex and time-consuming, per the differences in managing data across different departments.
Any data loss or corruption can be disastrous as the data recovery process can derail the entire project and severely impact its timeline and the project cost.
The team should thoroughly test new features, customization, integration, and implementation. A cross-functional team should do the testing to ensure that all the processes and systems are functioning as expected.
There should be a defined process to communicate discrepancies to the concerned team. Post changes, a cross-functional team should re-test it to ensure everything is working fine.
The employees, being the end users, should receive training to use Business Central effectively and efficiently.
If required, separate training modules and documents should be available to cater to the needs of different departments. The employees should be aware of the process for reporting any issues or complaints. A company can appoint a first-level point of contact within the department from the cross-functional project team managing the project since its initiation.
New employee training should be designed to help them familiarize themselves with the systems quickly.
It is the most crucial part of the project because if employees do not know how to use the system or face constant issues, they will not use it, and the whole exercise will be a waste.
A company should Go Live only after thorough testing and proper training. If it goes live without doing so, it risks facing issues and disruptions, leading to massive losses.
The technical team should continuously monitor and test the system to ensure smooth functioning. A contingency plan should be in place to tackle any untoward instances, including a chain of command and a set process to manage any issues.
Here are some best practices for achieving a successful Business Central implementation:
Dynamics 365 Business Central Implementation requires technical expertise, business acumen, and experience and it is not advisable for companies to perform on their own, as these companies are unfamiliar with how to use it, lack proper experience, and end up costing themselves more money in comparison to outsourcing. A partner with a successful track record will be able to provide more resources, better skillsets, and an impressive track record. This will help them get desired results quickly, without any errors.
If a company lacks the necessary skill sets or finds it overwhelming, it should outsource it to an external IT partner. If you are looking for Business Central implementation partner to help you implement Dynamics 365 Business Central successfully, connect with us at Cocoon IT.
CCIT Cloud (CocoonIT Services) is an expert Microsoft Cloud Solutions and Implementation Partner. Organisations around the globe, partner with CCIT to harness the full potential of Microsoft Dynamics, Azure Cloud and Power Platform.
