Dynamics & delaware: a SMART solution for service organizations

Sep 24, 2023

operations
IT
Microsoft

The digital transformation of the professional services industry has accelerated immensely in recent years. However, the rapid shift towards remote and hybrid work environments has also revealed critical gaps in many organizations’ connectivity. Expert project governance is crucial to adapt to those new ways of collaborating, improve performance and safeguard customer loyalty. Microsoft Dynamics 365 and delaware’s SMART solutions for professional services make sure organizations don’t drown in a sea of applications.

Many challenges, one unique solution

The professional services industry is a broad sector with a wide variety of sub domains. There is one thing service-oriented organizations all have in common, though: they operate in a big, demanding market, and need a specific kind of support to face a range of challenges:

win more contracts;
optimize resource utilization;
accelerate project delivery;
improve productivity, and simplify time and expenses;
maximize (and maintain) profitability.

The answer? Efficient project-centric practices, integrated into a set of cloud-based applications that leverage automation and collaboration.

Successfully tackling these challenges requires a unique approach. The combination of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and delaware’s composable SMART for Professional Services helps service organizations to solve those problems on multiple levels.

Microsoft Dynamics 365: the modern business application ecosystem

The professional services industry needs a system that enables them to adapt, automate and optimize to achieve more. A platform where business data are securely available for everyone, and where every employee can easily collaborate without having to switch to another app. That’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 – a sophisticated, modern ecosystem.

It allows all personas (C-level executives, accountants, project managers, etc.) to interact in one easy-to-understand digital environment – collaborative, extensible and composable.

What is Microsoft Dynamics 365?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 connects all the different layers of an organization: people, operations, processes, data, and more. The applications, which interact with any existing infrastructure, enable maximum operational excellence, project governance, and faster improvements with fewer (or the same) resources. That strong connection streamlines processes and makes them more visible, agile, and efficient.

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Multiple applications, one interface

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem offers a blueprint for cross-organization impact. Within the platform, Dynamics 365 Project Operations and Dynamics 365 Finance act as a single source of truth, which connects business processes with intelligence and data.

That top layer is supported by a low-code power platform, where employees can build applications, automate processes, or use Power BI for extra insights. It also contains well-established productivity and collaboration tools (Teams, Excel, Word, Outlook, …), analytics tools, preconfigured applications and ISV solutions from partners.

All in all, it offers plenty of opportunities to address the challenges of the professional services industry. But one solution is far from enough. You need a dynamic and future-proof platform that builds on its power.

delaware: a SMART choice

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, delaware combines Microsoft Dynamics 365 with its customized SMART Solution for Professional Services. Whereas Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides all the building blocks to manage project governance, the SMART solution acts as an accelerator to speed up that ERP implementation.

Built on the Microsoft ecosystem and based on customer experiences, the SMART package contains accelerators, add-ons and plug-ins that unify your processes in a way that suits you best: out-of-the-box BI reports, integrations, automations, business documents, and more . An excellent illustration is our SMART collaboration solution: when a project is initiated in D365, it is instantaneously mirrored in Microsoft Teams, which acts as the primary hub for document management and approvals.

Thanks to those low-code solutions, your infrastructure can remain simple and intuitive.

SMART for Professional Services in practice

We walk our talk. Watch our session at the delaware Conference to see us put our SMART for Professional Services into practice. Discover how connecting the right applications results in more productivity, insights and user friendliness and learn how to identify project activities and challenges efficiently.

4 SMART sayings to start your ERP journey

There is not one single magic tool to rule them all. Every key persona has a tool that best suits their needs, but it’s essential to combine them in one platform and tie all processes together.
Use what employees know. Even though multiple business applications may be running in the background, your system should be convenient and user-friendly – one unified experience.
Information should be pushed, not pulled. Everyone should automatically receive the information they need, based on their roles – instead of drowning in data.
Use reporting tools to aggregate data and avoid complex integrations. There is no need to fully integrate all fields between Dynamics 365 Project Operations and Dynamics 365 Finance – just add a reporting layer.