Total Enterprise Solutions

ISV Uses Flexible Licensing to Target New Segments, Build Cost-Effective Solutions

Microsoft® Certified Partner Total Enterprise Solutions (TES) provides implementation and support for Microsoft Dynamics® NAV. Because of customers’ cost concerns, TES typically deployed the solution to small groups, mostly within the finance and accounting departments of large organizations. Web services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 provide TES with an opportunity to integrate data and business logic from the business system to other applications. Now, TES can help customers cost-effectively extend the solution to more people to standardize and fully automate business processes. Microsoft Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office (DCO) licensing gives TES the technologies and licensing framework to take advantage of the integration capabilities offered in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. With the DCO licensing model, TES has penetrated larger markets and reduced development costs.

Innovations in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 combined with the DCO licensing model is what made it possible for us to start selling to organizations with relatively small core finance teams that service much larger employee populations. Chris Wilson, Technical Director, Total Enterprise Solutions

Situation

With offices in London and Manchester, England, Microsoft® Certified Partner Total Enterprise Solutions (TES) provides IT consulting services for Microsoft Dynamics® NAV. The company has five consultants and focuses exclusively on the arts and culture and nonprofit industries.

Since the company was formed in 2006, TES has primarily helped U.K.-based companies in these industries implement the solution to manage accounting and finance processes. Many of these organizations rely on manual workflows to handle routine tasks, such as purchase order approvals. And, without direct access to the business management system, employees across several different departments still use stand-alone spreadsheets to track sales, supply chain, or human resources information. “We’ve encountered a sense of deep frustration among the leadership in some of the nonprofits and museums we’ve worked with,” says Chris Wilson, Technical Director of TES. “They’ve got 10 or 15 finance employees who need to work in the system all day, every day, and a much larger community of employees who could benefit from access to limited functionality. But, from the organization’s perspective, the cost of extending the system to that larger group has always seemed too high.”

Recently, a large U.K.-based museum system faced this challenge. Because its purchase order approval process was manually driven, it routinely took up to 10 days to complete an order request. As the organization evaluated a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, leaders expressed the need for a highly distributed solution that hundreds of employees outside of its finance department could casually access.  

TES was poised to capitalize on a licensing model that exploited the Web services and enhanced integration with the Microsoft Office system available in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. “We saw a tremendous opportunity in being able to offer prospective customers a fast and easy way to provide RoleTailored functionality to employees across the organization,” says Wilson.

Solution

When Microsoft announced Microsoft Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office (DCO) licensing, Wilson and his team immediately appreciated the value of this new offering. With this licensing model, companies like TES can provide customers with licenses to access data and use business logic from Microsoft Dynamics NAV through familiar productivity tools in the Microsoft Office system and other custom applications. Customers can obtain the licenses at a fraction of the cost of a full user license. “TES grasped the potential of this combination of licensing and technology early on and their customers are reaping the benefits,” says Phil Newman, Partner Technology Specialist at Microsoft.

Since incorporating the licensing model into its offerings, the company has focused on building Microsoft ASP.NET–based and Windows® SharePoint® Services–based Web portal solutions, enabling internal users to access data and business logic from Microsoft Dynamics NAV. In addition, TES plans to take advantage of the flexibility of the DCO model to help future customers address a range of business scenarios. For example, because the DCO model bundles the requisite technologies and provides clear licensing guidelines, it makes it easier for customers to extend secure system access to external business partners.

The U.K. market is dominated by much larger and more well-known products, such as those from SAP and Oracle. And now, we are coming along with a product that is functionally competitive and much more cost effective than the competition. Chris Wilson, Technical Director, Total Enterprise Solutions

TES capitalizes on the DCO licensing option by targeting businesses with a small core finance team and a large user community, both internal and external, that must interact with the finance department. By bringing the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to people across diverse business functions, Wilson finds that customers begin to rethink the role of ERP. “Now, customers are not just thinking about the back-office accounting system, they’re thinking about what else they can do and how they can push out the solution to other areas of the business,” he says.

The enhanced extensibility of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, together with the demonstrable value proposition of DCO, has helped TES win over cost-conscious and risk-averse customers. “We enter into the sales conversation with more than just a broad set of packaged offerings,” says Wilson. “Now, with the new integration capabilities made possible through Web services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, we can build custom interfaces in the system much more quickly and cost efficiently.” TES has been able to use its portal solutions to expand the scope of the implementation projects it completes for customers.

In fact, the museum system selected TES among several competing consulting companies. The TES team deployed Microsoft Dynamics NAV to 15 finance employees and extended the solution to 400 DCO users. These employees now access data and business logic in Microsoft Dynamics NAV through a custom-built Web interface to perform purchase order processing and approval tasks. In addition to simplifying the process of generating purchase order documents, employees can view detailed vendor records, track costs associated with specific inventory items, and access reports to make faster, more informed purchasing decisions. “The ability to offer partial-access licensing played a pivotal role in our successful bid on the project,” says Wilson. “It fit hand-in-glove with the customer’s need to roll out the solution to a large number of employees to automate tasks and start improving efficiency straightaway.”

Benefits

Capitalizing on the integration capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 and the flexibility of the DCO licensing model, TES has successfully targeted larger organizations, improved customer satisfaction, and increased sales—all while reducing its own internal development costs. Says Wilson, “Innovations in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 combined with the DCO licensing model is what made it possible for us to start selling to organizations with relatively small core finance teams that service much larger employee populations.”

Reach New Markets
Before adopting the licensing model, TES routinely handled modest-sized implementations of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, deploying the solution to an average of 15 employees per project. Now, by providing a wide selection of packaged offerings and empowering customers to choose the one that best fits their needs, TES can help organizations meet the need of extending business logic and data from the business system to more people in their organizations. “The DCO model has given us the framework for deploying Microsoft Dynamics NAV to larger user groups,” says Wilson. “And, once customers see how easy it is to provide their entire organization with access through Web portal technology to a world-class ERP solution, they understand the tremendous value that it represents.”

The availability of Web services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 makes it so much quicker and easier for us to tailor solutions to fit customer needs. Chris Wilson, Technical Director, Total Enterprise Solutions

Reduce Internal and External Costs
By using the versatility of the DCO licensing structure, TES takes full advantage of the robust Web services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 to streamline development efforts. “The availability of Web services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 makes it so much quicker and easier for us to tailor solutions to fit customer needs,” says Wilson. TES has been able to combine reduced internal development expenses with discounted pricing through the DCO model to increase its competitiveness in highly cost-sensitive industries. “The U.K. market is dominated by much larger and more well-known products, such as those from SAP and Oracle,” says Wilson. “And now, we are coming along with a product that is functionally competitive and much more cost effective than the competition.”

Provide Customers with More Value
Because customers now receive more comprehensive business management functionality, they get far greater value from the underlying ERP system, as demonstrated in the implementation at the large museum system. “Because the 400 DCO users at the museum are using Web portals that work directly with Microsoft Dynamics NAV to handle purchase orders and approvals, all of the business logic, such as general ledger codes, is still there,” says Wilson. “This means that the data they put into the system is 100 percent clean, which enables the customer to gain massive operational efficiencies.” By providing DCO-licensed Web portals for order processing and approval to its employees, the museum has been able to reduce average purchase order approval time from 10 days to 1.4 days. “Just in the area of streamlining payables management, we’ve helped customers dramatically increase efficiency,” says Wilson. “The new capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 and the advantages of the DCO licensing model give us the ability to address just about any customer scenario—from increasing process automation to improving business intelligence and reporting. These tools give us tremendous flexibility to cost-effectively meet all of these needs.”

Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.

For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics

For More Information
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www.microsoft.com

For more information about Total Enterprise Solutions products and services, call 0845 257 1173 or visit the Web site at:
www.totalenterprisesolutions.co.uk

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