Business Process Evaluation: An Important Step Before Moving to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management

By Ron Rud | August 14, 2020

In your transition to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, you should first address these four planning areas. Then it is time to take a good look at your current business processes. Are the processes you have in place set up to fit your business needs? Or are they set up to fit Dynamics AX or an old way of doing things?

Moving to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management is about more than implementing a new software solution. It’s about moving your business forward, becoming more efficient, and strategically planning for the future. This is an opportune time to really dissect your business processes to understand if they are helping you or hindering you, and how they can be altered to drive more business, faster.

Business processes expand across every department in your company, so you’ll need input from a variety of team members ranging from finance to sales and marketing, human resources, operations, and management.

Step 1: Identify, outline, and evaluate all current business processes

Work with members in every department to identify, outline, and evaluate all your current business processes.

step 1 identify outline

As you evaluate each business process, ask the following questions (when applicable):

  • Are your employees spending time on manual entry or shuffling data between disparate systems?
  • Are there processes that are simply taking too much time to perform?
  • Where are processes lacking or underserving your needs?
  • Is there miscommunication when handing off processes between departments?
  • Are all employees giving visibility to the information they need?
  • Are all employees following the same steps to complete a process? Or are there inconsistencies?

Step 2: List all unmet business needs

In order to keep up with customer demands and expectations, and change to meet an evolving business environment, you need to constantly evaluate your needs and offerings. However, as you change, you may not always update your software solution or business processes. This is the time to list out all business needs that are currently not being met or need to be re-evaluated. For example, you may realize the need for a true customer portal, but are only offering basic online customer service. This is an area that easily could be improved and streamlined through technology.

Step 3: Comparison Time

While Dynamics 365 out of the box fits the majority of business needs and processes, there are specific industry requirements or unique business processes that may not be covered. Along with your software partner, you should cross-reference your business processes and unmet needs with capabilities built into Dynamics 365 to identify any lean areas. Those areas can be resolved through process change, custom extension development, or an ISV solution.

ISV (Independent Software Vendor) solutions have long been a core component of every Microsoft Dynamics product. These solutions are met to fit specific needs, alleviating the requirement to develop custom code or extensions. A few of the most popular ISV solutions address tax compliance, payroll processing, electronic payments, document management, and more. You likely are using ISV solutions in your current AX environment.

Your software partner will have a list of trusted and reputable ISV solutions and can recommend the most beneficial add-on for your needs when necessary.

You may have current business processes that were put in place specifically due to the design of Dynamics AX. By upgrading to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, you have an opportunity to reimagine and reinvent your processes to better fit your business needs now and into the future.

Upgrading to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management is a step that will put your business on the path to long-term success. But that transition starts with some leg work to make sure that you’re strategic about your set up and execution of the system. Working with a reliable partner you trust is key to success. Download our upgrade infographic, and reach out to the experts at Stoneridge Software to talk about your move to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain.

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