Electroimpact’s operational efficiencies take off with Dynamics 365

Electroimpact, a leading aerospace engineering company known for its expertise in factory automation and tooling solutions, is the largest integrator of aircraft assembly lines in the world. More than 500 professionals at the company’s headquarters in Mukilteo, Washington, and at offices in the UK, France, and Australia, design and manufacture state-of-the-art aircraft assembly equipment for clients from Airbus to Xi'an Aircraft Company. Electroimpact replaced its 20-year-old, highly customized, on-premises enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 to modernize and standardize processes, enhance operational efficiency, and improve agility.

Moving to the cloud

Electroimpact had relied on its on-premises Epicor ERP system for nearly 20 years. In that time, the system became highly customized, leading to significant challenges in efficiency, support, and updates. Only one team member was familiar with the customizations, exposing the company to unnecessary risk and slowing system innovation. Kaitlyn Simester, Human Resources Manager at Electroimpact, explains, “Whenever we had to update our ERP, it was a yearlong process during which code broke and it took weeks to reestablish things. The downtime for updates was unsustainable.” 

Guided by implementation partner Encore, Electroimpact moved to the cloud with Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Supply Chain Management, Finance, and Human Resources. Mirroring Electroimpact’s unique engineer-driven approach to continuity, in which the same engineer is involved in every stage of a project from initial planning and development to final assembly and buy-off, the Dynamics 365 ERP solution guarantees seamless end-to-end flow with exacting visibility. “We wanted a system that was agile enough to be customized to fit our unique engineering needs but also align with best practices,” says Simester. “We get that with Dynamics 365 out of the box.” 

Optimizing design to delivery with Project Operations and Supply Chain Management

At Electroimpact, engineers play a pivotal role beyond traditional design work. They manage all customer communications, identify new business opportunities, and drive opportunities to orders. Doug Howell, Chief Financial Officer, explains that as an engineer-to-order company, its pipeline is constantly shifting. “Before Dynamics 365, tracking opportunities was incredibly challenging. Now, everything's streamlined. Opportunities are logged in one place, and with just a glance, we can see how our pipeline is shaping up. It saves hours of work, and the visibility has been a huge win for us—it’s transformed how we plan and prioritize.”

After confirmed purchase orders are set up as projects in Dynamics 365 Project Operations and key invoice milestones are assigned to specific project lines, engineers create bills of materials (BOMs) for their projects using CAD drawings and product life cycle management data from 3DExperience, integrated effortlessly with Dynamics 365 using Connectivity Studio by Staedean. BOMs flow from Project Operations to Supply Chain Management, which generates purchase orders for vendors. When materials are received and logged into inventory, the system initiates production orders that are linked directly to the corresponding projects.

Given the complexity of Electroimpact's projects, it's common for multiple production orders to interconnect, with parts manufactured separately and later assembled into larger components. Before implementing Dynamics 365, the company lacked a structured process for tracking purchases. The task relied heavily on engineers manually entering project numbers—a step often skipped due to their workload, resulting in incomplete and unreliable expense data. Engineers also submit weekly timesheets, logging hours against specific projects. Now, timesheet data feeds into payroll calculations, production time is automatically recorded against each project's production order, and Dynamics 365 ties costs directly to individual projects, offering detailed, accurate expense tracking while minimizing manual effort from busy engineers.

Streamlining high-flying efficiency with Finance

Out-of-the-box integration of Project Operations, Supply Chain Management, and Finance ensures that Electroimpact can track materials, manage complex production workflows, and report financials seamlessly across projects, with benefits for the entire finance team, from accounts receivable to accounts payable.

For instance, as milestones are achieved, the engineers notify the admin team to issue invoices. In the legacy system, only manual review of accounts receivable could reveal if payments were overdue—or if invoices had been issued at all. Today, Electroimpact tracks project milestones as payments are reconciled, all in Dynamics 365, and can easily identify any bottlenecks in the process. The separation of invoices and milestones ensures accurate tracking and reconciliation of work completed and payments due. This way, project delays or issues can be addressed without affecting the invoicing process and vice versa. On the accounts payable side, the ability to store vendor payment information directly in the system has enabled faster and more efficient payments. 

Empowering employees with Human Resources

Knowing that a shift in Human Resources (HR) operations was necessary as part of the modernization effort, Electroimpact engaged Ludia Consulting for help moving from Epicor HCM to Dynamics 365 Human Resources. The company’s goals were to streamline HR processes and centralize critical data, both key for a small HR team supporting a growing company. 

A drawback of the legacy system was its unintuitive user interface, which required in-depth knowledge to navigate. Because the barrier to entry was so high, the adoption rate was low, leaving many manual processes disconnected from the database. Notably, managers had no way to track paid-time-off (PTO). Without visibility into PTO accrual balances, they had to ask HR to manually figure it out. Open enrollment for benefits had to be completed on paper, an onerous process that required painstaking data entry into multiple systems and employee selections tracked in Excel worksheets.

Dynamics 365 Human Resources unlocked a range of new capabilities. Ludia Consulting was critical in helping Electroimpact apply those capabilities to improve employees’ experience. Human Resources is seamlessly integrated with Finance, making it easy to keep PTO balances up to date and data flowing smoothly between HR and payroll systems. All employees now use Dynamics 365 Human Resources to enter timesheets and expense reports, track progress toward achieving goals and acquiring new skills, and self-serve benefits enrollment. The HR team can easily view the information. Benefit selections are seamlessly integrated with the payroll system and transmitted to benefit providers, slashing the open enrollment process from two weeks to just a few days. Other self-service features allow employees to update their personal information directly in the system, giving HR staff more time to focus on strategic initiatives rather than administrative tasks.

A wider array of fields allows Dynamics 365 Human Resources to store more comprehensive employee data, which supports deeper insights and improved reporting. And generating reports of all that data, which used to be cumbersome, is now easier and faster.

An additional win for Electroimpact is the ability to maintain training information in Dynamics 365. Engineers and manufacturing workers are protected by strict OSHA requirements, and it's imperative that the company comply with required training and certifications to ensure employees’ safety on the plant floor. The old recordkeeping system was paper-based, but in Dynamics 365 Human Resources, employees can be assigned courses and the system tracks their progress and completion data.

Navigating more precisely with better data and reporting

Dynamics 365 drives improved data quality and provides reliable, timely, and robust reporting and analytics for a clearer holistic view of the company’s financial status and data-driven decision-making. With the introduction of new financial dimensions and the ability to generate detailed and customizable reports with real-time insights, Electroimpact can monitor cash flow, revenue, and expenses more effectively. It can track project-specific expenses while simultaneously categorizing them under broader HR-related tasks.

For instance, in the old system, security-related checks for certain employees on specific projects either had to be coded to the project or to Human Resources; there was no way to code them to both. But the flexible financial dimension structure in Dynamics 365 allows for granular insights into how costs and resources are allocated. Cutting the data in different ways allows overhead analysis from multiple perspectives to easily assess project performance and efficiency.

Reaching new altitudes with easier updates

Today, system updates don’t require extensive code customizations—and are far less disruptive. The more standardized, user-friendly platform eliminates burdensome and risky reliance on a single knowledgeable individual. Simester explains, “The system allows us to easily implement new features as they come out and keeps us in a state of continuous improvement, something that’s important to us in meeting and exceeding our customers’ needs.”

On the runway

Electroimpact's transition to Microsoft Dynamics 365 has streamlined operations, improved project management, and unlocked unprecedented efficiencies. The new system is up and running in the UK with France up next.

At Electroimpact, its employees are its business. The company is setting the stage for Microsoft Copilot for Finance to streamline month-end processes and reduce the manual effort for the team that’s reconciling accounts even further. It’s also looking forward to leveraging Dynamics 365 Human Resources to centralize a 360-degree view of employee performance to facilitate constructive, data-driven, and actionable feedback. With Dynamics 365, Electroimpact continues to innovate in the aerospace tooling and automation industry.