If you are a distributor growing quickly, you can certainly relate to this story. One of our distribution customers came to us with exploding growth and several disparate systems that couldn’t support them. They are a young company that began with the systems they needed as a startup and added on over time. As orders increased, they expanded their products and sales channels, the supply chain became more complex, and they had a goal to bring manufacturing in house.
Like many companies managing growth, not having a unified technology stack resulted in disconnected data, manual processes, and a lack of visibility across inventory, operations and the organization as a whole. They knew they needed to upgrade their technology and wanted an integrated cloud-based solution that could scale with their anticipated growth.
Is it possible to deploy Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management in 90 days?
The real challenge was a new solution needed to be in place fast to align with their fiscal year end. They were evaluating a few options and partners and this accelerated timeline eliminated many right off the bat. Western Computer recommended Dynamic 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management as their platform and brought the advanced distribution expertise to get them live before year-end.
While many partners simply don’t have the experience or resources for accelerated deployments of Dynamics 365 Finance, Western Computer already had the senior-level resources, the methodologies in place for rapid implementations, and many successful cloud implementations for distributors under our belt.
Planning and Flexibility are Key
With clear expectations set, a phased implementation plan, and everyone on board to bring this vision to life—the work began.
To hit our 90-day goal, priorities were established for the first phase to get core financials completely set up and manufacturing started with lower priority items shifted to a second phase. For example, our customer had several third-party integrations needed and more than 30 trading partners which would be impossible to set up within the deadline. We worked with an EDI partner to get the highest priority big-box partners established in phase 1 with the rest after go live.
The deployment was a success and our customer was running on D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management in 90 days. This is a testament to the shared commitment of both our customer and our Western Computer team to communicate, remain flexible, and dedicate the resources needed to meet deadlines.
The Benefits
The transformation for our customer has been impressive with a rapid time to value and ongoing work to continue building their platform for the future.
Some of the major improvements we delivered in the 90-day period are:
Unified Cloud Platform
The customer’s legacy ERP system was fully retired and we were able to consolidate 5 systems into one, including ERP, Warehouse Management, Fulfillment, Fixed Assets, and Shopify Connection.
New Efficiencies
With new automations and workflows our customer enjoys standardized, streamlined business processes across the organization. We also helped them learn and implement distribution and financial best practices to further optimize their business today and into the future.
Real-Time Visibility
Lack of visibility was a major issue for our customer and now they have fully connected insight with enhanced Power BI reporting. Manual reporting processes were eliminated and data accuracy and integrity were improved.
Scalable Foundation for Growth
Supporting in-house manufacturing was one of the reasons our customer wanted to get new technology in place and now they have the systems and processes in place to optimize manufacturing as well including embedded WMS, fixed assets, budgeting and forecasting, and more. Their Dynamics 365 platform can scale easily and gives them a full cloud solution to grow on.
Ongoing Nurturing and Support
Being a young distributor, Western Computer is the perfect partner for our customer. Our mission has always been to educate and empower people and it’s truly the best part of the work we do here. We continue to share our many years of distribution expertise and advise our customer through growth and success.
You can view an illustrated overview of this rewarding project and if you can relate to this story, contact us any time to learn more about our solutions and services for distributors.
About the Author
More Content by Amanda Sherry
