Dynamics 365
Dynamics 365 Business Central
Finance and operations in one system, sized and priced for organizations without a large IT function.
Small & Mid-Market Enterprises · Business Applications
Thirty hours a month of finance admin, automated away
A product stewardship and recycling organization, North America. Invoicing, vendor payment uploads and vendor invoice approvals were manual, consuming finance time in an organization where every hour of overhead is an hour away from the mission.
The situation
What the organization was dealing with
Invoicing, vendor payment uploads and vendor invoice approvals were manual, consuming finance time in an organization where every hour of overhead is an hour away from the mission.
Mission-driven organizations are judged on overhead ratio, which makes finance automation a mission argument rather than an efficiency one. Every hour of manual invoicing is an hour not spent on the programme.
What was done
The work, and the part that was actually hard
Processes were automated in Business Central and extended with Power Pages, Power Automate and Power BI, including a recycling programme portal supporting more than 2,000 retailers.
The three figures — ten hours on invoicing, eight on banking, twelve on vendor approvals — are worth more than a single aggregate, because they show where the time actually was. Most organizations assume invoicing is the problem; here approvals cost more.
Results
What was published
These are the figures exactly as reported in the source. Nothing has been rounded, extrapolated or restated.
Saved monthly across three processes30 hrs
Retailers supported2,000+
Programme monitoringReal-time
What changed
- Ten hours a month saved on invoicing, eight on banking activity and twelve on vendor approvals
- A programme portal built on Power Pages supporting enrolment and training for over 2,000 retailers
- Real-time monitoring of programme operations through Power BI
- Platform flexible enough to adapt as the market changed
Platforms involved
What each product was doing here
Power Platform
Power Pages
External-facing sites where customers, suppliers, applicants or members submit and track information, with real authentication rather than an email form.
Power Platform
Power Automate
Workflow and integration. Moves data between systems, routes approvals and removes the manual re-keying that rarely appears in anyone's job description.
Power Platform
Power BI
Reporting on governed datasets, with row-level security so one report can serve a whole organization without exposing what it should not.
What transfers
If you were to attempt this
Breaking the saving down by process rather than reporting a total is the more useful way to build and defend the business case.
Where it usually gets harder than expected: Extending into a partner-facing portal for two thousand retailers is a different risk class from internal automation. External users are less forgiving and less trainable.
How we would take it on
Our approach to Business Applications work
1
Shadow the real process
We sit with the people doing the work and watch what actually happens, including every workaround. Process documents and reality are rarely the same thing.
2
Design against your own data
We prototype and show you your own records in it, not a demo company, before anything is built.
3
Go live in a contained phase
By site, by practice group or by service line — with the group that wants it most going first, to a fixed price.
4
Measure against the baseline
We report against the numbers agreed at the start, including where the result fell short of the target.
Recognise the problem?
If any of the above describes your organization, tell us where it hurts most. We will tell you what the same platforms could realistically do in your environment, what we would measure, and whether we think it is worth doing at all.
Talk to our teamMore Business Applications storiesWe reply to every message within one business day.
Related reports
Others you may want to read
Patient outreach that people actually respond toAlso in Business ApplicationsOne view of the member, on every channelAlso in Business ApplicationsThousands of service interactions a day, forty per cent automatedAlso in Business ApplicationsForty siloed systems into one citizen recordAlso in Business Applications