The Business
A UK based division of a global entertainment business, providing merchandise and brand management services on a global basis. As an organisation, they had become frustrated with the incumbent Microsoft Dynamics NAV partner in terms of reliability of their hosted services for the solution and poor turnaround of support requests. As they were coming towards the end of their contract, it was an ideal time to consider their options with a new business partner.
The Challenges
As the organisation had grown, the need to manage financial transactions and supply chain demand upon a reliable hosted server platform without necessarily moving to another ERP solution was still paramount. They were also aware that for governance purposes the Dynamics NAV application would need upgrading to the latest version.
Selecting Microsoft Dynamics and Advantage
Having made the decision to replace their Dynamics NAV partner, engagements were made with 3 London based partners, including Advantage. Their key business requirements were:
The new partner had to meet the following criteria:
- Ideally London based to have easy access to consultants.
- Experienced with supply chain and distribution companies.
- Strong support ethos – in particular with accountancy credentials.
- Gold ERP Partner status.
- Well established experience over many years of the Dynamics NAV application.
- Managed IT services, to ensure full management of the hosted server environment.
- Experienced Account Management.
Following a review of 3 leading Microsoft partners, Advantage was selected due to their ability to meet the customer’s expectations and criteria and to provide a competitive cost of ownership for hosting and supporting of the solution.
The Benefits
The transition from the incumbent Dynamics NAV partner to Advantage was successfully completed without significant downtime of the solution for end users. The benefits realised, both after the transition and to this day include:
- Hosting of the Dynamics NAV servers on Microsoft’s Azure servers, providing 99.95% uptime guarantee.
- Successful migration onto the latest version of Dynamics NAV, including the carrying over of historic transactions.
- Proactive response to ad hoc development and consultancy requests.
- Responsive Support Desk with SLAs being monitored and adhered to.
- Strong Account Management, acting as an advocate for Microsoft technologies and applications.
Following their successful move to the Cloud & NAV support partner, the Financial Director at this global entertainment business commented “we were extremely pleased with the speed at which this project was completed in moving us onto the Cloud and supporting our Dynamics NAV system. Furthermore, we also couldn’t believe how knowledgeable the team at Advantage were at not only completing the transition but also in answering our queries that occurred during the process. If you are looking for a Microsoft Partner to help you make the move to the Cloud and support your NAV application, we couldn’t recommend Advantage highly enough”.
Martyn Kemp, New Business Sales & Account Manager was pleased with the outcome “It was an absolute gamechanger for them to move to the Cloud & NAV support partner as it helped them to future proof their business going forwards. Furthermore, this unique technology is fully supported by our team here at Advantage to make sure that they can continue to make significant strides as a business.”
Conclusion
This global entertainment business was confident in choosing Advantage as their Microsoft Partner to help them move to the Cloud and support their Dynamics NAV system.
After the completion of their move to the Cloud and NAV support partner, they have seen significant improvements in their day-to-day efficiency and productivity and a much easier way of accessing their business-critical data while on the move.
