This Professional Services organisation provides training courses to members of the public, in relation to the Police & Fire services within the UK. They additionally provide courses to fleet management businesses in over 25 countries.
The Challenge
The organisation was originally part of a larger automotive organisation but was divesting from the main business to become independent. That independence meant they could not continue to use their SAP Finance / ERP solution, it also meant that they required a solution that was more aligned with a mid-market / SME organisation. A Request for Proposal (RFP) was sent out to prospective solution providers.
Picking Advantage
After reviewing several mid-market Finance / ERP solutions, a decision was made in favour of a Microsoft strategy for the business. This strategy aligned with technologies already in place such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Office and SQL based internal applications and skill sets.
After making the decision to migrate to a Microsoft Dynamics solution to align with a strategy for Microsoft technologies, the organisation adopted a search and selection process with potential partners that were able to meet key criteria:
- A partner with a proven track record in similar organisations, ideally based within the M25.
- A partner that had experience of delivering solutions not only within the UK, but across Europe, to enable incorporation of an office in Holland.
- Ability to provide a solution that incorporated backing evidence documents to customer invoices.
- Good knowledge of the full Microsoft Dynamics suite, to ensure the integration of the finance system to the CRM application could be accommodated.
- Provide proactive Account Management to drive the organisation forwards and act as an advocate for Microsoft technologies.
- Provision of a proactive support desk, with inherent accountancy skills as well as deep functional knowledge and experience of Microsoft Dynamics.
Following a review of leading UK Partners, Advantage was selected to implement the Microsoft Dynamics solution. Furthermore, Advantage continues to provide ongoing business continuity support to this day and has successfully upgraded the original Dynamics solution to latest version with minimal impact to the business.
The Benefits
The Microsoft Dynamics solution was successfully implemented for the UK and Holland within a six-month timeframe. Some of the benefits realised by the Microsoft solution and move to Advantage were:
- Automation of business processes reducing the need for manual key punching intervention.
- Provided a cost-effective software foundation that will scale as the organisation evolves and grows.
- Provide a familiar Microsoft user interface that will be easy to use, and therefore quickly adopted.
- Provided a Finance system that fully integrated with the Microsoft Office suite and the related Microsoft software ‘stack’.
- Provisioned standard scheduled management reports using standard Dynamics inherent reporting capability, and the use of Excel based reporting tools, such as Jet Reports, providing complete flexibility for end user reporting, without the need to revert to Advantage post go-live.
- Reduced the manual, labour intensive overhead of the generation of customer invoices and associated backing evidence documents.
- Introduced an Expenses solution that streamlined the expense submission and approval process and reduced processing time by Finance staff.
The value gained from implementing the above ERP solution was reiterated by the Financial Director at this professional services organisation who commented “We’re extremely pleased with the fact that the Microsoft ERP system was the final part of the puzzle in ensuring that we had everything all under the Microsoft roof, and it is clear that we’ve already seen the value of doing so. We couldn’t be happier with the Advantage ERP team who showed extreme determination and flexibility in making sure the ERP solution was specifically tailored to our requirements. If you are a looking for a comprehensive and reliable Microsoft partner to implement ERP then please give Advantage a call”.
Martyn Kemp, New Business Sales & Account Manager at Advantage remarked “When this professional services organisation came to Advantage, they had two different systems that clearly weren’t going to work together going forwards. That is why, we encouraged them to make the move to a Microsoft ERP that allowed them to consolidate all their systems into one place under the Microsoft umbrella. In addition to this, the implemented technology is fully supported by our team of experts at Advantage to ensure that they are maximising their value from using this system”.
Conclusion
As you discovered from the above, this professional services organisation is delighted with the value they have seen from their move to Dynamics ERP.
After the successful implementation of their Microsoft Dynamics system, they have automated their business processes, they have reduced the manual, labour intensive overhead of the generation of customer invoices, provisioned standard scheduled management reports as well as introduced a comprehensive expenses solution. Advantage continue to support this organisation to help ensure that they are making the most out of the functionality.
