The Business
A provider of software to the Global Executive search market, with their application being used in over 50 countries. Their global offices have serviced over 1,500 customers during the last 3 decades.
The Challenges
As the organisation has grown, the need to better manage customer engagement and seamlessly integrate financial transactions, together with the need for better reporting and business intelligence, resulted in a move to transition their existing Microsoft CRM and Finance applications.
The incumbent Microsoft CRM and Finance applications were no longer supported by Microsoft and in need of an upgrade. Neither did the two applications, provided by their previous Microsoft partner, integrate seamlessly with each other.
To retain the inherent in-house knowledge built up upon both applications and transition to a Cloud SaaS strategy, the decision to transition their Dynamics CRM solution to the cloud and their Dynamics NAV solution to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud Finance solution was made.
Choosing Advantage
Whilst the organisation was not satisfied with the partner, they were convinced that the Microsoft Dynamics solution was the correct choice. They therefore looked to engage a new partner, with the following criteria in mind:
- 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, Asia and the USA.
- Expertise within the full Microsoft Dynamics mid-market suite, to ensure the integration of the Microsoft finance system to the Microsoft 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.
The Benefits
The Microsoft Dynamics Cloud solution was successfully implemented and some of the benefits realised by the Microsoft solution and move to Advantage were:
- Reduction in the customers’ software billing cycle workload following the seamless integration between the CRM and Finance applications.
- Implementation of a solution that enabled the organisation to expand without additional demand being placed upon the finance team overheads.
- The solution was extremely reliable in terms of uptime (guaranteed at 99.95% by Microsoft), and performance was excellent.
- Improved reporting and Business Intelligence capability was inherent within the solution, to enable the organisation to quickly export and analyse data at a glance.
- Provided organisational efficiency – it is critical that time delays for the day to day running of the business were minimised to focus on business-critical tasks.
The significant improvements gleaned as a result of the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics Cloud were revealed by the Head of Finance at this AIM Listed Professional Services software provider who commented “We’re extremely happy with the fact that we now have a streamlined and holistic Customer and Engagement and Billing solution in place, utilising state of the art Microsoft technologies. As soon as we started the project with Advantage, it was evident from the onset that we had chosen the right partner as we were extremely pleased with their agile approach to the project as well as their ability to adapt to any changes we required. As well as this, we were overwhelmed by how knowledgeable their team of Microsoft Dynamics experts were in answering any queries/questions we had throughout the duration of the project. There are no doubts in our minds that we would choose Advantage again if prompted to and we would strongly recommend them to any business looking to transform the way they work”.
Martyn Kemp, New Business Sales & Account Manager at Advantage commented “This company were great to work with and we were delighted with how successfully this implementation went. This has already started positively impacting on their bottom line as well as providing them with a number of benefits which they had not encountered prior to the project. As well as this, we continue to fully support their system to make sure that they maximise their use of it going forwards”.
Conclusion
As you can see from the above, this AIM Listed Professional Services software provider were pleased with the way that Advantage handled the Microsoft Dynamics Cloud project from concept right through to completion.
In light of the smooth implementation of their new Microsoft Dynamics Cloud system, they have already seen a reduction in the customers software billing cycle workload, an increase in the overall uptime of the system as well as a rapid improvement in the overall efficiency & productivity across their business. Advantage continue to fully support this solution to ensure that they are making use of all the functionality contained within it.
