A global group of food and dairy companies successfully deployed ERP solution based on Microsoft Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV, however ongoing support of implemented solution was unsatisfactory. With increasing number of service & change requests, an internal support team could not keep up with increasing overload. Moreover, postponement of enhancement and major modifications was another crucial challenge as it required additional human resource with technical expertise.
Following a business reference, the global group requested for one of the leading ICT service providers worldwide to support their existing ERP solution as proven 20 years of expertise in implementing, maintaining and developing of Microsoft Dynamics AX had guaranteed the best service on the market.
Within first 9 months of support of Dynamics AX 2009 and Dynamics NAV,our consultants and developers implemented major integrations, enhanced the
solution and optimised the business processes. Additionally, incident
management was provided within agreed SLAs.
Key Challenges
- Provide full range of support services of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and Dynamics NAV including system maintenance, implementation of recommended enhancements and optimisation of the business processes.
- Due to high customisation of the implemented solution, the main goal is to review all existing enterprise business procedures and identify if they were correctly implemented in the system.
- Another crucial task was to systematise the knowledge base of EBP and introduce document management system as the implemented solution & enhancements were not documented properly, and multiple documents were written in different languages.
Solution
Implemented our solution
- The full support service has been provided since November 2018. ICL Services have been supporting two ERP systems as the business processes were initially split between Dynamics AX & Dynamics NAV. General ledger, Inventory management, Sales ledger, Purchase ledger and reporting were implemented in Dynamics AX 2009, and Dynamics NAV was used for transportation and logistics.
Deployed ITSM – system in order to systematise the incoming user requests including incidents, service requests and change requests, which reduced the average time of resolving incidents to 0.5-2 hours and minimised the number of critical issues. In order to reduce the number of downtimes, the approval mechanism to control software releases was introduced. In this case, every change request should be complete multiple steps including analysis with translating business needs into technical requirements, design, and development.
Additionally, the service support contained multiple complex projects to optimize business processes and boost labour productivity including:
- Integration with EDI and MDM systems;
- Automation of report distribution;
- Batch job control automation;
- Enhancement of batch job processing;
- Development of an AX lab test assessment solution;
- Implement digital payments to optimize the cash flow.
Results
- ICL Services have developed and deployed all uncompleted developments and enhancements in Dynamics NAV, which were left uncompleted by previous partners. Furthermore, our specialists enhanced Dynamics NAV by integrating it with EDI & MDM systems resulting in reduction of the total service cost of the implemented solution.
- Implementing MDM integration has provided the customer with a great tool of getting access to all supply chain data analytics on every stage of supply chain process starting with purchasing of raw materials or supplies to shipping and delivery of the final products to the customers. By analysing supply chain & customer data, the customer has obtained a clear picture that would assist the business to better predict the future demands and possible delays.
- To enhance batch job processing and simplify the control of system administration of running batches, ICL Services have implemented an advanced batch solution, which has one single form of the control. It allows system administrators to schedule the running time of all batches in a way that it distributes the overall load on the system.
- To extract and analyse the data of a Dairy laboratory, ICL services have implemented the AX Lab Test assessment solution, which combines all required information and statistic of milk processing in one dashboard. Additionally, the solution includes the tool, which boosts the performance by displaying the data of the whole product portfolio.
- Outsourcing the support of Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV, the customer has obtained extra resources, which cover daily support, complex solution implementation, and full maintenance of the system.