As the demand for ERP systems continues to grow, platforms like Dynamics 365 Business Central experience widespread adoption. Dynamics 365 Business Central now supports over 40,000+ small and mid-sized businesses on its SaaS platform. Users increase by 200% annually, highlighting the solution’s growing popularity. And while 80% of companies successfully implement the ERP, less than 50% report achieving their expected Business Central ROI. This gap is often due to inadequate lifecycle support and maintenance of the platform, necessitating the need for around-the-clock Application Managed Services.
Understanding Common Business Central Challenges Post-implementation
SMBs often turn to Dynamics 365 Business Central to transform business operations, improve financial performance, boost sales and service, and optimize supply chain management. However, despite a successful deployment, they face many challenges in the day-to-day monitoring and management of this ERP:
1. Timely User Support
As users transition from a legacy tool to a modern and intelligent solution, they face several issues navigating the system, finding the information they need, and making quick decisions. Addressing and resolving these issues for in-house teams with limited expertise doesn’t come easy for these teams. These teams also face hurdles in creating standard operating procedures, establishing best practices, and onboarding and training users.
2. Functionality Pain Points
Another challenge SMBs face post Dynamics 365 Business Central deployment is around functionality. As many implement an out-of-the-box system with little or no customization, the challenge of configuration not optimized to support business processes often emerges. Organizations also realize that they are not leveraging intelligent workflows and automated processes to the fullest and recognize the need for improvements in user experience.
3. Continuous Improvement
With Microsoft constantly optimizing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to meet evolving needs, SMBs find it challenging to stay on top of new functionality and updates. Lack of familiarity with the Microsoft ecosystem and upcoming initiatives makes aligning future business growth goals with a technology maturity strategy difficult.
4. System Management/ Maintenance
Businesses often struggle to maintain in-house expertise to manage system updates, security patches, or administrative functions. They also struggle to conduct necessary testing before system updates and lack the time and skillset to improve and optimize Business Central’s performance over time.
Transforming Costs to Value – Key Components
The challenges in running and optimizing any Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central deployment often diminish the ROI. Organizations looking to transform costs into value must rethink their support model. Here are the four key components that hold the key to maximizing Business Central returns:
1. Proactive Support
For any Business Central deployment to function correctly, proactive support is vital. Anticipating potential performance, security, or user experience issues is critical to maintaining user satisfaction. Support teams must also be capable of finding the root cause of recurring issues for permanent resolution and maximizing application uptime and availability.
2. Continuous Improvement
Organizations using Dynamics 365 Business Central must also have a mechanism to stay updated with new features and opportunities and how they can be leveraged to keep up with technology innovations. Evolving business processes with new additions in the Dynamics ecosystem are also essential for staying relevant.
3. Strategic Alignment
With business needs and market trends constantly evolving, organizations must align current and future business goals with the Business Central roadmap. From adding new functionality to removing those that don’t make sense, organizations must put in effort to ensure strategic alignment of business and technology objectives.
4. Cost Efficiency
Running and optimizing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central requires organizations to uncover ways to maximize cost efficiency. One way to do this is by leveraging economies of scale via shared resources/global delivery model. They can also consolidate their technology ecosystem and bring in partners who can run the system’s day-to-day operations.
The Role of Business Central Application Managed Services
Keeping up with the pace of emerging technologies while aligning technology tools with evolving business needs is a Herculean task. With businesses focused on their core priorities, devoting time and resources to day-to-day Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central management is complex. Many companies also face issues in hiring, training, and retaining Business Central talent while struggling to scale the system to meet current and future integration and collaboration needs.
Businesses looking to make technology investments with business goals in mind and keep up with the pace of advancement must embrace Application Managed Services (AMS). A qualified AMS provider can enable businesses to:
- Focus time and energy on core competencies while qualified experts handle daily Business Central management and administration.
- Enjoy continuous improvement via updates/upgrades and ensure the Business Central instance runs on the latest version.
- Maximize employee productivity and efficiency by having all user issues identified and resolved in time.
- Drive scalability by accessing features and capabilities on-demand and meeting the growing needs of the business.
Explore Synoptek’s Business Central Application Managed Services
As organizations continue to face issues with managing and maintaining their Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central deployment, Synoptek’s Business Central Application Managed Services aims to improve customer results by participating on an outcomes basis in the initial transformation roadmap, planning, setup, and ongoing system operation. By providing access to skilled and certified Business Central talent, we help boost overall business results for our clients, allowing them to meet their ROI objectives while building lifetime value-added relationships with them.
Engage with our Business Central experts to get support for commonly used technology platforms through a single window. Watch our on-demand webinar to learn more.
