The Business
A UK based technology leader, with operations in Holland and the US, servicing individuals, through to gyms and larger clients, provide digital solutions for personal fitness. They deliver digital fitness classes in over 50 countries, with over 10 million classes played in 2019.
The Challenges
As the organisation has grown, the need to manage financial transactions for commercials and general accounting, together with the need for better reporting and business intelligence, resulted in a move to a more robust ERP system. The decision was made to migrate from Sage to Microsoft Dynamics, and a Microsoft Partner was selected. However, during the initial stages of the project it became apparent that the design of the solution by the partner was not aligned with the business requirements and the cost of deployment was felt to be excessive.
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, to enable the incorporation of an office in Holland and the USA.
- Ability to provide a solution that would significantly reduce the 2-to-3-week invoice processing carried out each month.
- Good knowledge of the full Microsoft Dynamics suite, to ensure the integration of the finance system to the Salesforce CRM application could be accommodated.
- Provision of a fully managed hosting service for the solution.
- 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 hosted solution was successfully implemented and some of the benefits realised by the Microsoft solution and move to Advantage were:
- Immediate reduction in the time taken to invoice customers from 2-3 weeks per month, to 2-3 days per month.
- 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.
- Implementation of a solution that enabled the organisation to expand without additional demand 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.
The improvements gained as a result of the move to Microsoft Dynamics were highlighted by the Head of Finance at this UK technology leader who stated “We’re extremely happy with the fact that we’ve now got a suitable ERP system in place for a reasonable cost that will allow us to revolutionise the way that we work. As soon as we started the project with Advantage, it was clear that we had made the right choice of partner as we were delighted with how professional Advantage were in not only meeting our expectations but well and truly exceeding them by going the extra mile to ensure that we had an ERP system that was ready to go from the off. Added to which, we were extremely happy with the knowledge and expertise that the team at Advantage had to be able to answer any queries that we raised throughout the process. We have no doubts that Advantage was the right choice of partner for our business and we would happily recommend them to any other business that asked”.
Martyn Kemp, New Business Sales & Account Manager at Advantage remarked “I was happy with how smoothly the project went in giving this organisation a fully scalable Microsoft ERP system that was within their budget. This has clearly revolutionised the way they work and some of the benefits gleaned already have demonstrated this progress which just highlights how easy it is for Advantage to improve any business through technology. Furthermore, we continue to fully support their system to ensure that they continue to get the very best out of it going forwards".
Conclusion
As highlighted from the above, this UK based technology leader was delighted with the decision they made to choose Advantage as their ERP partner to implement their new Microsoft ERP system.
As a result of the smooth implementation of their Microsoft Dynamics system, they have seen an immediate reduction in the time taken to process customer invoices from 3 weeks per month to just 3 days per month, improved their reporting capabilities as well as transformed their overall efficiency across their business. Advantage continue to support this solution to make sure that they are using all the features contained within it.
