D365 Finance & Operations and Dynamics AX Forum

We're an ingredients group of companies operating in food production, industrial and Pharma.  When considering D365 as a common platform, I'm wondering how important the decision on single partner (for all the businesses) is , and how significant their alignment to the industry you operate in is.   Any help/advice/working contacts would be great!

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corin morgan
ABF ingredients
peterborough
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If you are planning to end up with a single ERP used by all your divisions (so, a single solution) - I would say it is quite important to have to have a single organization directing/owning the overall solution, and making sure all the different pieces / solutions work well together.

I say organization, and not a partner, because you might choose (and some companies have done that) - build that capability in house - a team of solution architects and professionals who can direct the work of the potentially multiple implementation vendors.

There has been discussions in the past and presentation in conferences of adopting a "template" approach when you build a core single solution, and then roll it out to each legal entity/company as they go live.
The basics of the template remain the same while every local office does some (hopefully) minor adjustments to accommodate specific or regional business requirements.

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Zvika Rimalt
Functional Consultant
Vancouver BC
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Original Message:
Sent: Jan 13, 2021 05:48 AM
From: corin morgan
Subject: Partner selection

We're an ingredients group of companies operating in food production, industrial and Pharma.  When considering D365 as a common platform, I'm wondering how important the decision on single partner (for all the businesses) is , and how significant their alignment to the industry you operate in is.   Any help/advice/working contacts would be great!

------------------------------
corin morgan
ABF ingredients
peterborough
------------------------------

i agree with Zvika's advice. You may end up with multiple partners if you want to gain from deep expertise in certain module or addons, but having one org concept will make it successful.

Similarly we use template approach to rollout in multiple markets, each with minor adjustments and it makes it a lot manageable
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 13, 2021 06:32 PM
From: Zvika Rimalt
Subject: Partner selection

If you are planning to end up with a single ERP used by all your divisions (so, a single solution) - I would say it is quite important to have to have a single organization directing/owning the overall solution, and making sure all the different pieces / solutions work well together.

I say organization, and not a partner, because you might choose (and some companies have done that) - build that capability in house - a team of solution architects and professionals who can direct the work of the potentially multiple implementation vendors.

There has been discussions in the past and presentation in conferences of adopting a "template" approach when you build a core single solution, and then roll it out to each legal entity/company as they go live.
The basics of the template remain the same while every local office does some (hopefully) minor adjustments to accommodate specific or regional business requirements.

------------------------------
Zvika Rimalt
Functional Consultant
Vancouver BC

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 13, 2021 05:48 AM
From: corin morgan
Subject: Partner selection

We're an ingredients group of companies operating in food production, industrial and Pharma.  When considering D365 as a common platform, I'm wondering how important the decision on single partner (for all the businesses) is , and how significant their alignment to the industry you operate in is.   Any help/advice/working contacts would be great!

------------------------------
corin morgan
ABF ingredients
peterborough
------------------------------

Microsoft normally expect you to have one "Partner of Record" associated with your Dynamics 365 Finance installation. That's probably best practice to ensure consistency across a company - and only one "throat to choke" if there is any issue needing to get sorted.

The partner who helped us run up our installation tends to specialise in large multinational food and process manufacturing customers (where we are in Education - about as far from!). They historically have a lot of on-premise AX clients, where we are 100% cloud based. The implementation was really a rushed minimal viable deployment (in four months), with us using ledgers, journals and banking; we are subsequently enabling sales functionality and purchase functionality. Our gotcha is that we had to go to tender the quote to cash piece, which a different vendor won - so we're only the early stages of having a mix of two partners active on the same installation. The new partner is also much more closely aligned to the public sector markets we sell into.

The advice we got from one of the initial reference sites we engaged with was that the critical asset for success was the quality of the functional consultants we managed to get assigned on our project (quality within any partner company can be variable). 2.5 years later, we can see that was great advice - and have sufficient experience to know some of the nuances in the partners we deal with.

Good luck on your journey :-)

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Ian Waring
Head of Finance Systems & Projects
Jisc
Bristol
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Original Message:
Sent: Jan 13, 2021 05:48 AM
From: corin morgan
Subject: Partner selection

We're an ingredients group of companies operating in food production, industrial and Pharma.  When considering D365 as a common platform, I'm wondering how important the decision on single partner (for all the businesses) is , and how significant their alignment to the industry you operate in is.   Any help/advice/working contacts would be great!

------------------------------
corin morgan
ABF ingredients
peterborough
------------------------------

Hi Corin,
I'll chime in to support what Zvika said. Worked with a US based food ingredients client with worldwide operations a number of years back (AX2012). They chose to pursue a single, global system based on AX using a model where they governed the overall solution architecture/template and the implementation project but used various partners in various geographies/disciplines to augment their internal team. They are still trying to achieve that global rollout...

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Jack Moran
Solutions Architect
MCA Connect
Greenfield NH
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Original Message:
Sent: Jan 13, 2021 05:48 AM
From: corin morgan
Subject: Partner selection

We're an ingredients group of companies operating in food production, industrial and Pharma.  When considering D365 as a common platform, I'm wondering how important the decision on single partner (for all the businesses) is , and how significant their alignment to the industry you operate in is.   Any help/advice/working contacts would be great!

------------------------------
corin morgan
ABF ingredients
peterborough
------------------------------

When it comes to alignment with the industry there is some importance. For instance, there is a big difference between setting up discrete manufacturing vs process manufacturing. As an ingredients company, I imagine finding someone with process manufacturing experience will be critical. You will also want someone that understands the impacts of implementing potency.

Assuming your group of companies extends across national borders, it will be important to find a partner with experience in multinational implementations, and then you'll likely have to find a local partners for the countries you operate in - at least for those countries that have significant localization requirements.


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Tony Zeigler
Senior Consultant
Strategic Solutions NW
Beaverton OR
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Original Message:
Sent: Jan 13, 2021 05:48 AM
From: corin morgan
Subject: Partner selection

We're an ingredients group of companies operating in food production, industrial and Pharma.  When considering D365 as a common platform, I'm wondering how important the decision on single partner (for all the businesses) is , and how significant their alignment to the industry you operate in is.   Any help/advice/working contacts would be great!

------------------------------
corin morgan
ABF ingredients
peterborough
------------------------------