How do we get started?

That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? How do we get started? Well, basically, someone must decide, “We need to become more modern in our organization; otherwise, we’ll be left behind.” The point and goal of an organization is to deliver a product or service to a customer and, ultimately, make money.

It’s totally possible to make money using old-fashioned systems – account books for accounting, order books to manage orders for customers, and printed flyers for customers, but it’s not really all that efficient. How much time does an employee spend handwriting out these types of documents, and how much space is then required to store those documents? If an organization is to keep, let’s say, seven years’ worth of financial data for tax purposes, how many filing cabinets, or file storage boxes in a warehouse, do we need to keep all that information? And then what happens if you need to find one document from a box that contains data from six years ago?

Alternatively, maybe an organization has several different systems they work with but don’t have the ability to share data. This can cause a number of issues, including duplication of work, extra spending on supplies and maintenance, and potentially missing payments from customers and to vendors.

At some point, someone (usually in the finance department) will visit IT and suggest that they look at a way to improve how the organization operates. Depending on the size of the organization, a committee will be created that will come up with a way to improve operations.

From there, a technology roadmap will be created, and ultimately, a budget will be allocated so that a new digital transformation can occur. But what if you have no idea how or what needs to happen to get to a desired destination?

With so many different types of software available on the market, most organizations can’t make an educated decision without assistance from someone (usually a company that specializes in ERP deployments) who has many years of experience working with technology. So, you find a few people who have experience in leading organizations with their technology roadmaps, interview them, and finally, hire someone to help guide you on the journey.

Now that you have a leader in place (with the guidance of a consulting company), and a good idea of how you want to proceed, you start to look at different software tools, technologies, and partners to help you deploy a solution. You made an important decision in this process – for instance, you really like Microsoft products and would prefer to stick with those technologies, including tools such as Azure and Power Platform, because you trust the company and believe that their technologies will be well supported far into the future.

You can now announce to the company that it is going to migrate its current systems to Microsoft Dynamics 365.