It was designed to integrate various business processes into one unified system, allowing organizations to manage their financials, sales, service and operations seamlessly.

Imagine having all your essential business functions—from accounting and inventory to customer service and project management—running smoothly under one roof, with customized dashboards for different users….that’s D365 Business Central.

It gives users access to their business data anytime, anywhere, on any device, making it so much easier to reach informed decisions and drive growth.

What You Need To Know About Of D365 Business Central

• • Financial Management: Streamline financial operations, improve accuracy and reduce human error whilst maintaining compliance standards with automated processes.
  • Supply Chain Management: Optimize your supply chain, manage inventory levels and track orders efficiently.
  • Sales and Service: Enhance your customer interactions, manage sales processes and deliver outstanding service.
  • Project Management: Plan, monitor and execute projects with precision, ensuring timely delivery and cost control.
  • Reporting and Analytics: Gain insights from your data with powerful reporting and analytics tools.

This article isn’t about what D365 BC is though, or why you should get it for your organization… If you’re reading this, you’re likely already way past that stage.

Today I’ll be discussing what happens next, and what the implementation will look like, with the possible effects it’ll have on your organization and staff during and after those processes.

The Pre-Implementation Phase

Before the implementation starts, you’ll need to get all your ducks lined up in a row… that’s what pre-implementation is for in fact.

That means, before you dive into your implementation stages, it’s crucial to understand your organization… it’s motives and needs for choosing D365 BC, the specific problems you’re looking to solve, and the stakeholders (both senior and junior) that will be affected by this.

• • Assess Your Business Needs – Before diving into a full D365 BC implementation, it’s crucial to understand your specific business needs and objectives. This step will ensure that your end-solution is tailored to address all your unique challenges and goals.
  • Identify Your Key Pain Points – Start by identifying the primary pain points in your current operations. Are you struggling with inefficient processes, lack of integration between systems or poor data visibility? Understanding these issues will help you determine the areas where Dynamics 365 Business Central can bring the most value to your organization.
  • Clearly Document Your Business Objectives – Clearly outline your business objectives. Whether you aim to improve financial management, enhance customer service or streamline supply chain operations, having well-defined goals will guide the implementation process as well as measure its success and ROI after.
  • Gather Stakeholder Input – Engage with key stakeholders across your organization to gather their input and perspectives. This includes department heads, end-users, and IT staff. Their insights will provide a comprehensive view of the requirements and ensure buy-in for the implementation.

Far too many digital transformation projects fail because this step was skipped.

Choosing The Right Partner (cough… FormusPro… cough)

Selecting the right implementation partner is almost, if not more, important as selecting the technology you want in the first place… in fact the two will often go hand in hand.

An experienced and reliable partner will be there to guide you through the entire process, provide valuable expertise and ensure a smooth transition during afterwards.

What they absolutely should never do is drop Dynamics 365 BC on you, take their payment and then just disappear.

• • Evaluate Their Experience & Expertise – Look for partners with a proven track record in implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central…. If they have a case studies page, search it for mention of D365 BC. Assess their experience in your industry and their understanding of your specific business needs. Check for certifications and client testimonials to gauge their expertise. All these things will tell you if they’ll be a fit or not.
  • Consider The Cultural Fit – Your implementation partner should also align with your company’s culture and values. A good cultural fit ensures effective communication, collaboration and a better working relationship throughout the project. You could be working with these people for a while so getting in with them should be somewhere on your priority list.
  • Review Support And Services – Evaluate the support and services offered by potential partners. This should include their approach to training, post-implementation support, and ongoing maintenance. A partner who offers comprehensive support will always help you maximise the benefits of your investment.

Preparation & Planning Phase

Through planning and prep, the right partner will help you lay the foundation for a successful implementation.

This phase involves detailed project planning, resource allocation, and risk management.

• • Develop Your Project Plan – Creating a detailed project plan that outlines the scope, timeline, milestones, and deliverables is important… but sticking to it is even more important, so be realistic at this stage. It needs to include a clear roadmap for each phase of the implementation, from initial setup to post-launch support, taking in unexpected problems that could occur along the way.
  • Allocate Resources – Once that’s done, you need to ensure that you’ve the necessary resources for the project, including personnel, budget and technology. This is the bit where it’s vital to assign a dedicated (and competent) project manager who can assemble a cross-functional team to oversee the entire implementation.
  • Conduct Risk Assessment – Identify all the potential risks and challenges that could impact your implementation and then use that list to develop a risk management plan that includes mitigation strategies and contingency measures to address any issues that may arise.

The Solution Discovery Phase

This phase is all about unearthing the detail behind the functional, technical, integration and reporting requirements for your project.

We typically attend site, to meet your people, to conduct a series of deep dive scoping workshops, looking at your current systems, business processes, and all the inputs and outputs required for the new system. This is our chance to understand your business and determine how the new system should be implemented optimally.

Once the workshops are complete, we will document the findings, which will serve as the blueprint for the implementation. This is not the final solution design document, that comes later, after the build phase, but it provides the guidelines for the team to follow heading into the build phase. We will also revise the initial project plan and costing (service days estimate) after the discovery phase, as we will know a lot more after the discovery phase than we did before it.

The Solution Design & Build Phase

Initial Setup & Configuration

Here comes the fun bit… we’re finally going to be implementing Business Central for you!

The initial setup and configuration phase will involve us setting up the Dynamics 365 Business Central environment in a way that most aligns with your business requirements.

From there, we’d configure all your system settings, including company information, user roles, access levels and permissions and ensure that the configuration being implemented aligns with your business processes and security requirements.

Once that was done, we’d activate the necessary modules based on what you’ll be using / needing. That’s because D365 Business Central offers various modules, such as financial management, sales, purchasing, and inventory management and many organizations won’t want or need them all, so we only select and configure the modules that will be relevant to your operations.

Data Migration

Once implemented, we need to get all your data inside of Business Central, making the data migration a critical step in any implementation process. It will involve transferring your data from your existing systems into D365 BC.

But… as we’re doing that (or actually just before), we’ll also conduct a thorough assessment of the data, using it as an opportunity to identify any inconsistencies, duplicates or outdated information.

Once that’s done, it’s time to clean it all up the to ensure the highest levels of accuracy and integrity before we start the migration.

As part of that migration, we’ll need to do something called data mapping, where we’ll map all of your existing data into the corresponding fields in Business Central. Doing that ensures your data is accurately transferred and properly formatted in the new system with a minimum of fuss as we’ll know where it should all go before we even start.

Finally, we execute the data migration process.

This typically involves exporting data from your current systems, transforming it to match the new Business Central structure, and importing it into the new environment.

Once done, we’d obviously perform thorough testing to verify data accuracy and completeness for you.

Customization & Development

Of course, all the above assumes your just taking D365 Business Central out-of-the-box (something that’s absolutely fine, many organizations do just this).

However, we also recognise that every organization is unique, with their own needs and requirements so rather than just offering an out-the-box solution, we’ll also talk to you about any customizations you might require to make Business Central uniquely ‘yours’.

We can customize, develop and tailor it as much as required so it meets all your specific business requirements and workflows.

That might include modifying forms, adding custom fields or creating specific reports for you.

Training & Testing Phase

Training

The fun doesn’t stop once Business Central has been implemented, developed and configured to an organization’s exact specifications though.

In fact, something like 84% of digital transformations will fail because far too often, that’s where some Microsoft partners out there just stop, job done (or not as the case may be).

The next, crucial step is to bring along your staff’s hearts and minds during the digital transformation, which is why they’re needed during the initial processes as well, to make sure their needs will be met and once implemented, it’s why training becomes so important.

You can’t just drop a new system on people and expect them to be experts instantly. Ensuing everyone is proficient maximizes the benefits you signed up for and helps achieve all of your business objectives… making it much easier to hit ROI targets.

There’s different ways to achieve this, based on numerous factors like time, availability and location… we’re always happy to work in a way that best suits your needs.

• Classroom Training: In-person sessions led by experienced BC trainers can provide a structured learning environment, allowing for hands-on practice and immediate feedback.
• Online Training: However, flexible e-learning modules and webinars offer a more convenient approach and can be accessed anytime, making it ideal for geographically dispersed teams or those with busy schedules.
• Role-Based Training: Any partner worth their salt should also be able to conduct tailored training sessions based on specific roles to ensure that your employees learn the functionalities most relevant to their job responsibilities. This focused approach enhances efficiency and relevance but can take more time.
• Train-the-Trainer: Training key users or internal champions who can then train others within the organization is a great way to ensure mass adoption of the tech, as well as a broader sharing of the knowledge. The benefit of this method is that it quickly fosters internal expertise leading to increased sustainability of the solution.
• User Manuals: Whilst very hands off, detailed guides that cover all aspects of the new system are also incredibly helpful, post training to refer back to.
• Video Tutorials: As are visual and interactive guides that demonstrate how to perform specific tasks that can be accessed quickly.

Testing & Quality Assurance

So, we’ve scoped out your requirements, migrated your data, trained your staff and implemented D365 Business Central… so why aren’t we pressing the go-live button?

Because, although everything’s ready… it’s not been tested yet, which is the step that HAS to come next before anything goes live.

• • Unit Testing: Unit testing will focus on differing, individual components of the system to ensure they all function as intended in isolation. This is a critical step for identifying and resolving issues early so they can be fixed before they become an issue in the end-solution.
  • Integration Testing: Once we know all the individual components work, we need to ensure that all those differing modules and components also work together seamlessly, by confirming that data flows correctly between different parts of the system.
  • User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Again, making sure we bring your staff’s hearts and minds along with the digital transformation, we make sure to involve all end-users in the testing to validate that the system meets both their needs and their expectations. UAT is a vital step in uncovering any practical issues and ensuring user satisfaction.

The Go-Live Phase

Finally, the day has come, and your new Business Central solution is going live! It’s time for the final preparations.

• Review & Checklist – It’s always worth conducting one last, comprehensive review of the system configuration, data migration, customizations, and all the training efforts. We tend to use a detailed checklist to confirm that all the critical (and non-critical) tasks are completed, and that the system really is ready for deployment.
• Communication Plan – Execute the communication plan so as to inform all stakeholders about the go-live schedule, any expected downtime, and the availability of support resources. Having clear communication about the process will help manage expectations and ensures everyone is prepared for the transition when it happens (which is soon now!).

Launch Day Activities

On launch day we’ll execute the final steps to transition from your old system to your brand new and shiny Dynamics 365 Business Central by:

• Activating The System: This is where we enable the new system for all users, and they can finally get in and start using it.
• Data Synchronization: As we go live, we’ll conduct a final data synchronization, just to ensure all the information is up to date. Typically we load the opening balances into BC, with historical data (if that is in scope), and reconcile the figures back to your legacy systems with full documentation to satisfy your auditors.
• Monitor Performance: It goes without saying we’ll closely monitor the system performance and user access to promptly address any issues that may arise in the early days of a go-live.
• Support Availability – And finally, as everything is new, we always ensure that a dedicated support team is available to provide immediate assistance.

Post-Launch Support (Hypercare)

Don’t worry… you’re not immediately on your own once everything goes live… at least you won’t be with the right partner.

Post launch, it’s important to still have comprehensive support for your users as they begin working with their new system. Our Hypercare service is delivered by the team who implemented the delivered your project, ensuring continuity, typically up to and including your first month end. At the right time for you, we handover the system to our dedicated BC support team who will take the baton and continue to deliver rapid response support to your users as the system beds in following Hypercare.

Post-launch support should address any technical issues that occur, answer questions, and offer additional training if needed to ensure the smoothest possible transition.

It should also include space for monitoring and feedback to keep an eye on system performance whilst gathering user feedback during the initial weeks post-launch.

This feedback should be used to make any necessary adjustments and improvements, ensuring the system meets user original needs and expectations.

Post-Implementation Phase

Now everything’s live and in daily use, it’s important to remember that continuous improvement will become part of your daily workflow.

Dynamics 365 Business Central receives regular updates from Microsoft, including new features, enhancements, and security patches so it’s important to stay informed about these and to plan for their deployment, ensuring your system remains current and secure.

Whilst that’s taking place, we’d also recommend you establish mechanisms for users to provide ongoing feedback, such as surveys, regular meetings and / or a dedicated support channel.

These continuous feedback loops will help you identify areas for enhancement and ensure user satisfaction.

Final Thoughts

You’ve gotten this far, so you’re obviously not scared about embracing change which means perhaps I don’t need to say anything about encouraging your team(s) to embrace the new system and the changes it embodies.

That said, if you’ve still any questions, worries or doubts I’d be happy to discuss them with you!