Quant transforms silos into synergy with Dynamics 365

Quant’s Dynamics AX solution was at the end of its supported life, making way for an upgrade and an opportunity to unify its global platform.

Out of the box, Dynamics 365 Finance, Project Operations and Supply Chain Management met Quant’s requirements and ushered in a new era of harmonization.

Now, a global chart of accounts, automated settlement and payments, a full view of customer activity, and an improved user experience optimize efficiencies in a futureproof environment that leverages Microsoft’s maintenance support.

For more than 35 years, Quant has been a market leader in outsourced industrial maintenance, improving safety, production, and equipment performance at more than 400 facilities worldwide. Customers ranging from metals to food service companies rely on Quant to improve their uptime with optimized resource deployments. Quant’s distinctive Smart Maintenance approach systematically drives sustainability, plant performance, cost optimization, and safety for production equipment in industries such as pulp and paper, chemicals, food and beverage, and discrete manufacturing. Headquartered in Sweden, Quant and its 2,700 employees are passionate about delivering its services responsibly and reliably throughout the 12 countries in which it operates. Upgrading a legacy system to cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 resolved technical challenges, enhanced security, and standardized the company’s global operations.

Optimizing externally, challenged internally

In 2021, busy helping its customers optimize facility performance around the world, Quant faced its own challenges with the performance of its Microsoft Dynamics AX enterprise resource planning solution. The system had become a collection of disparate processes and extensive country-specific customizations, hampered by technical issues and infrastructure challenges. It was at the end of its supported life, which meant that it would no longer receive updates and security patches, leaving Quant vulnerable to security risks and cyberattacks and possible compliance issues. “Our Dynamics AX solution was weighed down by extensions and customizations that challenged our daily work,” says Robert Berkel, Product Area Manager at Quant. “We realized we couldn’t move forward with this system anymore.” As a business that prioritizes dependability and efficiency, Quant knew that to remain future-ready and competitive and continue delivering smart services and innovative solutions, it needed to level up its stack and embrace the cloud.

An upgrade also represented an opportunity to unify its global platform. The company wanted to ensure that each site uses the same solution in the same way with the same processes whether it’s in Spain, Peru, or Finland, with limited customizations and extensions. Finally, the new solution would have to be easily scalable and agile to drive automations, AI, and sustainability innovations.

Quant selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Project Operations and Supply Chain Management and longtime implementation partner sa.global to take the company into the future.

Standardizing, the Quant Way

Quant worked closely with the sa.global team to identify the core processes that it wanted to use in all countries, regions, and entities—a standard that would become known as “the Quant Way.” Coming from a heavily customized, disparate landscape, it was imperative to Quant that the new solution meets business needs with standard functionality, with customization only where statutory, regulatory, and tax localizations required it. Dynamics 365 was exactly the right tool. Rather than contorting a solution to match the business, Dynamics 365 met nearly every requirement out of the box.

The rollout began in October 2022 with a pilot in Switzerland, which allowed the implementation team to harmonize processes and define a golden template. The next sites to go live were in the United States, Peru, and Chile in January 2023; Sweden, Norway, and Spain in May; and Finland and Estonia in September. Brazil and Mexico completed the global rollout in January 2024.

The data migration was smooth and adoption was high. Successfully managing change at this scale lay in appointing key users as ambassadors, according to sa.global’s Jaana Nylund. “The users know the business process and know their peers. They are the most equipped to bring everyone on board and aligned with the overall goal.”

Implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 has been pivotal in harmonizing our processes and streamlining operations across the organization. The platform’s real-time insights and unified approach have enhanced efficiency and positioned us for scalable growth.

Madelene Kärvin, Chief Financial Officer, Quant

Working smarter, not harder

Standardizing processes all over the world—particularly in South America, where tax regulations and compliance are complex—without breaking the harmonization was no easy feat. Dynamics 365 made it possible, and the benefits are clear.

Global chart of accounts

A global chart of accounts replaces the disparate local versions of the legacy system, with translation as needed for regulatory reporting. Quant can easily comply with local regulations while benefiting from consolidated group reporting and greater visibility that allows for global benchmarking. With just out-of-the-box capabilities, Dynamics 365 replaced three third-party solutions.

Automated settlement and payments

Employees no longer need to be present at each location to sign in to online banks, study the bank transactions list, manually generate the corresponding journal, and search for the physical invoices settled by the transactions to complete payment. Dynamics 365 receives receipts in a file from the bank, imports them to the journal, and posts them, which settles the invoices automatically, saving Quant an average of three hours per week.

Accounts receivable processes are equally streamlined. Quant contracts for both recurring services and one-off work orders for the same account. With Dynamics 365, the company can easily process both transaction types, record them to the relevant accounts receivable, and follow with collections, bank balance tracking, and revaluation. It can receive reference payments data in a file from the bank, load the file, and register the payments, all automatically.

Compliance and auditing

Dynamics 365 complies with ISO 200022, ensuring timely vendor payment where this type of banking is supported. Its financial period close workspace and electronic invoicing and payments are out-of-the-box functionalities that immediately support audit trails and illuminate closing activities.

Project-based costing

Quant’s contracts are enormous, with lots of small, moving parts. Tracking monthly and ad hoc services used to be a cumbersome experience. Now the ability to track costs on a per-project basis gives Quant a full view of customer activity, driving reliable profitability analyses.

Global supply chain

The Quant Way replaced local supply chain management processes with a harmonized system. Now, the purchase process for sites where work is done directly in Dynamics 365 and sites where Quant uses a computerized maintenance management system to manage work orders and inventories is the same: Requests for items and services from any source flow into Dynamics 365 as a purchase requisition, which might become an optional RFQ. The requisition or RFQ becomes a purchase order with approvals, which becomes a receipt with inventory management, and finally turns into an invoice and payment with their respective approvals. The streamlined flow and approvals reduce lead times and increase purchase order accuracy. Dynamics 365 also integrates with IBM Maximo to manage inventory of spare parts and protective equipment.

Improved user experience

Users needed to sign in to the legacy system using a Remote Desktop Web connection. Now they sign in through a webpage, saving them time and giving them a better experience.

Futureproofing with Dynamics 365

With cloud-based Dynamics 365, Quant’s system is centralized and transparent. Because Microsoft provides maintenance support, Quant no longer needs to invest in infrastructure or dedicate IT resources to frequent updates. And as the company continues to grow, the solution grows with it. In fact, Quant recently brought a new Brazilian entity online with the minimal effort. Quant is excited to explore new sustainability and AI innovations that its harmonized system now makes possible. Madelene Kärvin, Chief Financial Officer, Quant sums it up this way, "Implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 has been pivotal in harmonizing our processes and streamlining operations across the organization. The platform’s real-time insights and unified approach have enhanced efficiency and positioned us for scalable growth."