Willmott Dixon builds a stronger business foundation by automating processes in Dynamics 365

Willmott Dixon is a privately owned contracting and property fit-out company based in the United Kingdom. Its purpose is to deliver brilliant buildings, transform lives, strengthen communities, and enhance the environment so that the world is fit for future generations. Willmott Dixon was recently listed fourth in the Financial Times (FT) guide of the 1,000 best companies to work for in Europe, a testament to the company’s people-first culture.

Because the company’s business-critical financial systems were inefficient and would soon be out of support, Willmott Dixon selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 to streamline sales and core financial processes and simplify data retrieval and reporting. Now, the company saves hours every month on previously manual processes, anticipates improved forecasting through better visibility into business data, and has increased confidence and reliability in ERP system compliance, which is a criteria Willmott Dixon must prove to win some government contracts.

In need of a new foundation

Willmott Dixon, established in 1852, is a prominent construction and property services company. Known for its commitment to delivering high-quality projects across various sectors, including residential, commercial, and the public sector, Willmott Dixon has built a strong reputation for its innovative approach to construction, sustainability, and community engagement. With a workforce of 2,000 people, the company emphasizes collaboration and integrity, ensuring that each project meets the highest standards of safety and quality. 

Willmott Dixon was facing challenges with its key on-premises legacy systems, including the CODA financial system and the SAGE customer relationship management (CRM) solution. These systems were outdated and unable to meet the growing demands of the company. Also, the CODA system was nearing end of life, and technical support would soon expire. “For a business of our size and scale, it was critical that we replace these two systems,” says Pranav Tari, Digital Business Partner for Willmott Dixon.

The company’s finance team also relied heavily on manual processes to manage payments to suppliers and process the monthly Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) tax return and send it to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Manual data entry sometimes led to duplicated data, increased errors, and limited visibility into financial information. Several hours were spent each month correcting data errors and retrieving data. To overcome these challenges, Willmott Dixon sought a new centralized core accounting solution that could improve financial forecasting, cost control, and operational efficiency.

A solid foundation for financial processes

In 2021, Willmott Dixon chose to address its challenges by implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. The new solution gives the company a unified platform that integrates seamlessly with existing homegrown supplier payments, customer invoicing, and expense applications. Finance offers features such as automated payment proposals and real-time data access, which significantly improve the efficiency of the Willmott Dixon finance team.

With Dynamics 365, the finance team has improved bank reconciliations with automated matching rules and systemized approval workflows for key business processes, such as managing supplier bank accounts and posting invoices. The company has also automated the issuance of CIS statements to supply chain partners by using Finance, which has not only saved several hours each month but also improved the reliability of CIS statements being sent. In addition, financial reporting is now standardized for the company’s financial leaders. Over the next few years, the company also plans to move its homegrown procurement systems to Dynamics 365.

Automating payment processing

Following the Finance implementation, the Willmott Dixon finance team began to see new efficiencies in previous manual processes. For example, automated payment proposals save the team approximately one hour per day across three people. “With automated payment proposals in Dynamics 365, our payments team no longer has to manually build and run up to nine proposals every day,” says Jack Day, Group Finance Manager at Willmott Dixon. “The proposals are all set up to run overnight and are waiting for the team when they arrive in the morning.”

Willmott Dixon also saves several hours per month through the automation of its project bank account payment administration. “This process is much more straightforward in Dynamics 365,” says Day. “The payments used to be very challenging and time-consuming to administer.”

Saving time with the Financial Reconciliation Agent

The monthly CIS tax return process is also faster using the Financial Reconciliation Agent, which streamlines financial reconciliation by extracting data from Dynamics 365 and automating the creation of reconciliation reports for CIS returns. The agent uses AI to determine the reconciliation rules and creates a comprehensive report that provides a generative AI summary of the results of the reconciliation process. The agent can also:

• Compare financial data structures using AI

• Automatically generate reconciliation reports

• Suggest resolutions for discrepancies

• Save summaries and action items for audit and future reference

The agent learns from previous reconciliation actions to improve future performance. It can recommend how to resolve discrepancies based on historical patterns, making it smarter over time.

“Reconciling the CIS return before submitting it to HMRC was previously a manual and time-consuming process, taking more than two days. Using the Financial Reconciliation Agent, this process only takes one hour,” Day says. “This is a significant time savings and a huge benefit for the payments team.” The company is also considering the use of the Financial Reconciliation Agent to save additional time by automating bank reconciliations and customer receipts.

Better visibility leads to better forecasting

Willmott Dixon now has enhanced visibility into its financial data, which will help the company streamline financial processes. “Dynamics 365 is starting to transform some of our finance processes. We are excited to see the other benefits Dynamics 365 will bring as we adopt more of its functionality,” says Day. For instance, the company’s different operating units can access more detailed financial information than they could in the previous system. “Each of our operating units has a small finance team that manages day-to-day financials for that unit,” says Day. “They now have access to updated data in Dynamics 365 without having to come to us for that information. Whether they’re looking for invoices or the latest transaction data, they can find it all on their own now.”

In its previous technological environment, Willmott Dixon also lacked visibility into cash transactions and capital employed—the total amount of money invested to generate profits. In Dynamics 365, the finance team can now see a capital employed table for each legal entity, along with all cash transactions. “Capital employed is one of the most important measures we track, and Dynamics 365 gives us more transparency and visibility into the process,” says Day. “We can go into Dynamics 365 at any time to get all the updated information we need, right away.”

With better visibility into its data and more efficient processes, Willmott Dixon has reduced errors. “Our fixed asset process is more robust in Dynamics 365, so we can track our assets more closely,” says Day. “There was more room for human error in our old system, so we’ve improved on that with this solution.”

In addition, having a standardized chart of accounts across the entire business will likely facilitate powerful group-level reporting for Willmott Dixon, contributing to better business insights. “With Dynamics 365, we’ve consolidated our finance system and management accounts, and that means we can now complete a fuller month-end process to ensure our ledgers in Dynamics 365 agree with our monthly board management reports,” says Day. “From a financial perspective, that helps us plan for the future and have better forecasting overall.” Nandi Anand, Solution Architect at Willmott Dixon, adds, “Dynamics 365 helps us better connect people, processes, and data. As a result, we can make smarter business decisions.”

Achieving critical certifications for government contracts

Approval workflows in Dynamics 365 have enhanced security and control over critical changes, such as supplier and bank account management, reducing risk for the company. “With Dynamics 365, we have a more secure, robust process with more auditability around it,” says Day.

Auditability is especially important for the company because it must pass annual security audits for its public sector customers. “For public sector contracts, we need to be aligned with certain security certifications,” Tari says. “Dynamics 365 helps us be fully compliant in terms of security updates, which makes the certification process easier. This is critical for our business, because we have massive contracts that rely on us having certifications. Over the next few years, we will move all our commercial applications to Dynamics 365, which will put us an even better position in terms of securing certifications every year.”

Building for the future

Next, Willmott Dixon hopes to expand its use of Dynamics 365 to include Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations capabilities. The company will also continue to explore the use of AI to enhance processes. Willmott Dixon has already begun a proof of concept that uses Microsoft Azure AI Foundry to analyze information from the organization’s knowledge base for projects, to help simplify future project bids. In the future, the company will explore the use of Account Reconciliation Agent within Dynamics 365 and Financial Reconciliation Agents for additional reconciliation scenarios such as banking. The company is also considering using Microsoft Copilot Studio to streamline knowledge management. “We’ve already seen some immediate efficiencies and improvements in our processes,” says Day. “We expect to see even more benefits as we continue our journey with Dynamics 365.”

Adds Graham Burr, Finance Director, Willmott Dixon, “Willmott Dixon is one of only a few construction firms who have invested in an evergreen platform such as Microsoft Dynamics 365. It sets the foundations for our future technology environment, and it replaced a legacy system that is no longer fit for purpose. Dynamics 365 has helped to streamline some of our financial processes and focus our attention on continuing to improve the efficiency of our processes. Immediate benefits around project bank accounts, the CIS (construction industry scheme) tax, and automated payment proposals are tangible. We have also been impressed by additional functionality the Financial Reconciliation Agent in Microsoft Excel has brought. We look forward to continuing our journey with Dynamics 365, adopting new functionality, and exploring what else is possible.”