Several industries worldwide have understood the importance of innovation and keeping up with the latest technologies in an accelerated manner. Countless small and big businesses emerged even during difficult times, and that won’t stop. Whether you’re tech savvy, own a business, or need to sell hassle-free online, eCommerce and Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP have stepped in to change this era for good.
Selling online is undoubtedly not an easy task. Sellers face constant challenges like cybersecurity, the exponential growth of competitors, order fulfillment, customer experience, visibility, and many other complicated processes that could be a headache for any company. Fortunately, comprehensive solutions like Dynamics 365 simplify sales and operations, especially in this period when customer digitalization has increased significantly. However, remember that it’s crucial to consider an expert implementation partner to support you through this transition without delay or failure.
“We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security—we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”
– Satya Nadella – CEO, Microsoft
Recently, Pangea Consultants teamed up with our partner VL OMNI for the first webinar to discuss the challenges, benefits, process, and implementation of eCommerce integration with Dynamics 365. In this session, Pangea’s Managing Partner, Santiago Morales, and VL OMNI’s CEO & Co-founder, Robin H. Smith, talked about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP strategic integration to connect all your business apps in one place. In this blog, you’ll find a summary of what was discussed in this session.
Dynamics 365 is the umbrella that encompasses the Microsoft business applications designed to optimize and transform your business activities. It’s a suite of cloud-based solutions that combines ERP, CRM, HCM, BI, and RPA capabilities designed to effectively connect, visualize, prioritize, and manage every business area while bringing a user-friendly experience to your customers and employees.
Every solution helps you meet core business needs across finance, supply chain, operations, sales, marketing, and more.
A common concern regarding Dynamics 365 is how long it will take to implement. Some companies are looking for a quick setup to improve their operations instantly, but they end up with failed executions. There’s no straightforward answer to the time it might take to implement the solution. However, from our experience setting up this ERP, a Dynamics 365 implementation might take six months to three years as a general estimate (depending on the complexity).
It’s worth noting that this process is time-extensive and heavily scrutinized, and some implementations may need one to seven deployments. The good news? Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP implementations tend to be quicker than other ERP rollouts.
Another challenge people encounter with B2B integration is the lack of research and strategic planning before diving into the process. Many organizations expect results from B2B eCommerce without a complete understanding of B2B and D2C (direct to customer) selling differences.
“The biggest challenges we see are people selecting eCommerce platforms that are not designed for B2B. They don’t understand that the very complex pricing matrices that you can set up in any ERP are not necessarily transferable to a B2B eCommerce platform without a lot of work”.
– Robin H. Smith
Here’s where the issue resides before any integration, lack of research and understanding. Thus, when venturing into eCommerce for B2B, it’s essential to consider what you want to accomplish and the processes you want to implement before seeking professional guidance.
Having a proper system in place, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP, brings a number of benefits that will completely change the way your organization operates. It allows you to focus on:
Cost of making business
Financial performance
Customer journey
Metrics around ROI
This level of visibility is critical for the C-level suite to reduce complexity while productivity increases; that’s precisely what Dynamics 365 brings to organizations of different industries. Dynamics 365 ERP also eases integration with your eCommerce platform, logistics, POS, marketplaces, EDI trading partners, and other systems. Additionally, it allows you to manage the integrations to meet your requirements while reducing risk-prone manual processes, improving your financial performance, bringing agility, operational efficiency, and ensuring global compliance, along with:
You can measure the success of an ERP implementation by considering different results after the implementation has been completed. You must be able to quickly, efficiently, and accurately control and manage your intercompany processes and consolidation processes. Also, you’ll notice overall operation improvements in the organization and have more prepared users with proper tool adoption.
“The success should not be measured on the go-live date. Success should be measured six months after the go-live.”
– Santiago Morales
Once the implementation goes live, the organization will likely feel overwhelmed due to the drastic changes they’ll face. However, this is where the right partner’s expertise comes to retrain and support the team to ensure a smooth transition. At the end of the first six months, employees will realize throughout this process the improvements and ROI to really measure the success of an ERP implementation.
As mentioned before, the ERP implementation process is not the same for each company, and it takes a different amount of time depending on the complexity. Users must consider that there will be ups and downs during the implementation process, but what truly matters is the success of the end goal. Understanding the company’s demands, challenges, and goals is crucial before starting this process.
As a tier-one ERP, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a very complex system that requires time and specialists in different parts of the application. Therefore, an organization looking for a Microsoft partner must consider one with proven tech credentials and resources. The right partner will place you at the center of the implementation, meaning you’re their top priority while they provide industry expertise and understand your needs and tech.
“If you don’t have a trusted partner, someone that understands the application, has individuals within the application or within the organization that are experts and components of the application, it’s going to be very difficult for you to self-implement. I wouldn’t even say difficult; I would say near impossible to have a successful implementation.”
– Santiago Morales
Another essential aspect to consider is the clarity of communication between the implementation partner and the users. This clarity throughout the process will avoid delays and misunderstandings, ensuring a solid relationship and workflow with remarkable results. Nevertheless, as users, the expert partners don’t expect you to understand everything before the implementation.
For instance, you know how to set up a wireless antenna but don’t fully comprehend the accounting piece within finance and operations; your implementation partner does know that. They accompany you from start to finish to provide that knowledge and facilitate your business operations while offering insight into what’s unknown to you.
In conclusion, as your business grows, supply chain complexity adds up. Keeping up with the pace of your operations with a disparate system or lack of robust ERP becomes impossible. That’s why high-growth companies require a comprehensive ERP integration solution to support and accelerate business growth. The process could be time-extensive but with lasting benefits that will undoubtedly empower your organization. You’ll experience a remarkable difference in prior manual tasks that will be automated and a significant decrease in errors, delivering the expected results — or better than expected.
As Microsoft Gold Partners, Pangea’s experts have guided various companies from different industries to run a smooth and seamless Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP implementation with first-rate support throughout the process. In the same way, our partner VL OMNI has provided outstanding services to several businesses by integrating their systems, channels, partners, and applications together.
We encourage you to choose expert partners with a skillset and track record of successfully migrating and deploying ERP and CRM solutions. A partner with broad expertise and the ability to leverage your business data and customizations with the solution that best fits your needs.
If you have questions regarding Dynamics 365 ERP implementation, please contact us here.
