Learn how replacing Intuitive™ with Business Central helped Fieldpiece to support their exponential growth & start their Digital Transformation

Customer
Fieldpiece Instruments, Inc.

Industry
Professional Equipement

Country
United States

May, 2022

Fieldpiece Instruments, a distributor specializing in selling tools and instruments for HVAC-R technicians, saw double-digit growth year-over-year in the US, which led them to expand their operations into Europe with offices in the Netherlands and the UK… and then, the entire world was turned upside down.

When the COVID pandemic hit, it immediately impacted the worldwide supply chain, FieldPiece was finding it difficult to manage a growing number of locations, entities, companies, employees, and currencies with their on-premise, legacy ERP- Intuitive™, disparate databases, and spreadsheets as the CRM system.

That’s when they reached out to Technology Management Concepts (TMC).

“The company was operating on an on-premise server, for both file storage and our legacy ERP system called Intuitive™; and then we had separate exchange servers hosted by another partner. So, things were disparate and unintegrated at that point, so we needed to take some time to look into scaling our systems going forward.”

– Tim Way, Chief Financial Officer at Fieldpiece.

Fieldpiece replaced Intuitive™ with Business Central to support their exponential growth & start their Digital Transformation.

To gain control over their finance and sales management, support their exponential growth, and start their digital transformation, TMC recommended implementing an advanced, innovative, and integrated system built on the Microsoft tech stack.

FieldPiece migrated to Microsoft 365, replaced Intuitive™ with Dynamics 365 Business Central, implemented Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, integrated DynamicShip™, a 3rd party shipping app from AppSource, and added multiple customized features using PowerApps & PowerBI.

By embracing its digital transformation, FieldPiece was able to access accurate, real-time data to make important decisions which allowed them to thrive as a distributor despite the pandemic and see record growth.

Leverage your technological partner to uncover issues upfront to fully consolidate their financial and sales data.

When FieldPiece first came to us, they were searching for the right technological partner, one that could help address their current needs by building a scalable solution that could support their growth.

During our Business Process Review, we uncovered many issues that needed to be addressed. FieldPiece realized it was time to upgrade their hardware and software as they had no existing CRM system, a disconnected, legacy ERP, and no online access. Working with separate entities operating in different databases, they found it difficult to access, monitor, and consolidate their financial and sales data.

We performed a business process review to set the objectives/expectations and ensure the total scope of the project is understood. We defined 3 priorities to achieve:

1. Migrate as much of their existing on-premise infrastructure to the cloud
2. Replace Intuitive™ with D365 BC for its multi-national/currency/entity capabilities
3. Deploy D365 CE to enhance their growing international sales team and processes

The unspoken 4th request: Tie all these objectives together to support the company’s growth.

“What I liked about the TMC process was the completion of the Business Process Review. It gave us the opportunity to think through our needs, explain all our processes and how a new system might impact them. TMC really dug in and used that document to understand our business and needs going forward. This document smoothened the implementation and kept the project on track, budget, and time!”

– Tim Way, Chief Financial Officer at Fieldpiece.

Implementing a combination of Microsoft business applications, AppSource solutions, and custom developments.

To meet their requirements, we implemented a combination of Microsoft solutions (BC & CE), AppSource solutions (DynamicShip, Jet Reports, EasyPDF), and custom developments by TMC using the PowerPlatform (Customized Dimensions at Ship-To locations and Waive shipping fees based on custom parameters).

As COVID was affecting the supply chain and imports, it became more important than ever to manage Back-ordered Inventory. We quickly addressed the backorder issue with a custom new field on the Sales Order List for Backorder Amount. It allowed them to better monitor their Backorders and their value.

In the end, we provided a complete Financial, Distribution, and Sales cloud solution that eliminated time-consuming manual processes outside of the system – paired with an integrated shipping solution that streamlines and improves shipping processes and timelines – re-enforced with a CRM system that centralizes customer communication and sales processes to strengthen their Marketing opportunities.

Next, TMC will be implementing an automated integration with the bank to record customer payments and working towards implementing a new company in Business Central to manage their Manufacturing business and processes.

“The company has had double digit growth for as far as I can see backward so we have been working on maintaining our systems and making sure our teams, our systems and processes are in place to continue that growth going forward.” – Tim Way, Chief Financial Officer at Fieldpiece.

“The Dynamics 365 Business Central Application has addressed all of our concerns, and all the challenges we had. It is a cloud-based solution, therefor I don’t need to worry about any upgrade, hardware or software going forward. Now, we are able to work on a lot of other efficiency gains, like connecting some of our third-party applications such as our commercial bank or our payroll system.” – Tim Way, Chief Financial Officer at Fieldpiece.