RWDI engineers a unified project management, accounting, and marketing solution with Dynamics 365

RWDI is a leading climate and performance engineering consulting firm dedicated to creating harmony between the built and natural worlds. Founded in Guelph, Ontario in 1972, RWDI built its reputation by working on the tallest, longest, most unique and challenging projects around the world, such as the Grand Canyon Skywalk and the Burj Khalifa. As a global organization, RWDI wanted to streamline its project management processes and better connect disparate business applications at its 31 offices in North America, Europe, Australia, and the Asia-Pacific region. Adding Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations to its growing Dynamics 365 estate gave the company a single, centralized solution for marketing, business development, project management, procurement, accounting, and human resources. As a result, RWDI increased project efficiency and accuracy, strengthening the company’s ability to market and deliver services to customers.

Searching for a unified project management tool

RWDI issues thousands of proposals each year, for projects as varied as assessing the impact of air quality and noise levels on surrounding areas from transportation sources, protecting the Giant Magellan Telescope from wind and weather extremes, and field-testing parade balloons. The company ultimately works on thousands of projects annually ranging in size, duration, and complexity. Tracking each project from start to finish was a complex process that depended on information captured from disparate enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and other systems. As Greg Conley, Principal - Director, Project Management Office at RWDI, explains, “Our project management department used a disjointed ERP application, Excel spreadsheets, and other tools to manage the business. We had a lot of duplicate data and inefficiencies overall, and it was difficult to create new project plans, estimate project fees, and track projects in a unified way.”

The RWDI finance team relied on a mix of ERP and third-party applications to manage purchasing, invoicing, and budgets. “A lot of these systems didn’t talk to one another, so there were data inconsistencies,” Conley says.

Along with more unified, centralized data, the finance team sought a way to provide better, more accurate reporting to management. “Because of the lack of centralized data, we sometimes had uncertainty around the accuracy of labor costing data at the department level,” explains Ross Quigley, Financial Controller at RWDI.

RWDI ultimately wanted to find a solution that consolidated all its business data and, says Conley, “integrated all our different functions, including project management, accounting, human resources, sales, and marketing.”

Building on top of a growing Dynamics 365 estate 

After conducting an internal business process review and a thorough evaluation of technology solutions, RWDI selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 because, as Conley explains, “it gave us a way to bring together different business applications into a single solution.” 

RWDI started with Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management (replacing BST), Customer Insights - Journeys, Human Resources, and Sales (replacing Salesforce), and aec360 by Microsoft Partner HSO. The company worked with HSO to add Project Operations to its Dynamics 365 application environment, including creating extensions and integrations that tailored Dynamics 365 to RWDI's unique business needs. The solution includes customized invoice templates in the specific formats that RWDI’s clients require, automated banking functions, and dual write, which allows data to flow seamlessly and in near real time between Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, and Dynamics 365 Project Operations.

With a single platform for accounting, sales, marketing, procurement, human resources, and project management functions, all parts of the organization are more efficient.

Streamlining marketing and business development activities

The integration of Sales and Customer Insights - Journeys gives the RWDI marketing team more impactful ways to reach out to customers. “Using Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys, we’ve automated a lot of our client outreach tasks,” says Dawn Porcellato, Practice Area Leader for Business Development, Sales, and Marketing at RWDI. “This gives us a one-stop application with a complete view into each unique customer engagement, including their interests and how many times we have connected with them.”

The team uses Customer Insights - Journeys to manage and conduct customer webinars through Microsoft Teams and collect data that helps them create new marketing campaigns based on attendee feedback. As Porcellato explains, “This helps us take a more seamless approach to marketing, where we can combine webinar information and follow-up insights into a single workflow. It also helps us better segment and target marketing campaigns, which will help us as we grow and diversify our business.”

The sales team uses LinkedIn Sales Navigator integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales to manage leads and opportunities from LinkedIn. Because they can easily compare data between Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn Sales Navigator without switching applications, they can maintain contact records more efficiently. LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps the company comply with privacy laws by securely integrating with its CRM system and encrypting data both in transit and at rest, ensuring that users may access only data they are authorized to see. The solution also provides resources to help manage and protect customer data in line with regulations such as the European Union’s GDPR.

RWDI’s sales team also relies on Microsoft Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales for its automatically generated summaries of customer phone calls, emails, and notes associated with specific campaigns. “In the past, we had to read entire emails and notes to learn more about a customer, but Copilot in Sales makes it easier by providing us with a good high-level overview of all marketing activities,” says Porcellato.

Engineering a seamless end-to-end project life cycle

The integrated Dynamics 365 and aec360 business platform seamlessly manages projects from start to finish. Won opportunities automatically become projects in Project Operations, where RWDI project managers use templates to easily create project plans and estimates, and track a project’s progress. Because Project Operations contains the full work breakdown structure (WBS) of each project, including schedules and resources, project managers have a complete view of tasks, due dates, budgets, and weekly timesheets.

Dual write sends project information to Dynamics 365 Finance for approvals, accounting, and other financials. RWDI also manages invoices for equipment inventory from third-party vendors in Finance. “Dynamics 365 helps us easily manage the full life cycle of a project, from the beginning of the sales cycle all the way to the final invoice collection in Dynamics 365 Finance,” says Conley. He estimates the Dynamics 365 solution saves the company between 2,000 and 3,000 hours annually.

Fixing project roadblocks faster with better reporting

Department managers and other senior leaders can view snapshots of Project Operations, Finance, and Sales data updated in near real time in Microsoft Power BI dashboards that offer deeper visibility into project status and financial information. “We have better reporting than we've ever had as a business with Dynamics 365 and Power BI,” says Ross Quigley, Financial Controller at RWDI. “Having access to near real-time data in Power BI gives us better visibility into budget versus actuals, which was harder to get with our previous systems. This makes our project estimates much more accurate. Also, using the WBS and tools within Project Operations, we can identify jobs that are at risk much easier, so we can get them back on track faster. That means our projects have a much higher chance of being on time and on budget for our customers.”

The company’s leaders use Power BI dashboards to make better, faster financial decisions. “With automated dashboards at their fingertips, our business leaders can spot trends or issues faster,” says Quigley. “One metric we track closely is gross margin, and we can act quickly if we see gross margin performance starting to slip on a project.”

Accelerating payments and simplifying audits with automated controls

Integrations and automated workflows in Dynamics 365 simplify purchasing and accounting processes. Instead of approving supplier invoices through email and mailing physical checks, the accounting team uses payment process workflows and pays suppliers using electronic funds transfer through the integration of the company’s treasury automation software with Dynamics 365 Finance. “We’ve reduced the time required to complete a payment cycle by 30% with Dynamics 365,” Quigley says. “And we have happier suppliers, because they receive their payments faster.” The system controls and oversight RWDI now has throughout the month allowed the accounting team to eliminate two days from its month-end close process.

Quigley adds, “We have completely transformed our purchasing cycle with the implementation of Dynamics 365. We can approve invoices directly in Finance, which provides a better audit trail and more control over the purchasing cycle. Our internal and external auditors don’t have to do as much testing each year because they’re more confident in our control structure.”

Improving accuracy with a single source of data

Previously, Human Resources had to manage payroll and HR-related data across multiple systems.  With that data now consolidated in Dynamics 365 Human Resources and Finance, says Cara Roy, Leader, HR Systems & Operational Excellence at RWDI, “we have more consistent and accurate accounting and payroll data.” Human Resources has also improved the employee experience by providing a single point of entry for employees. “We no longer require employees to navigate multiple systems,” Roy says. “They can access their personal information and timesheets through a unified system.” 

Additionally, Human Resources has enhanced its reporting capabilities through Power BI dashboards. “Generating reports has become much more efficient,” says Roy. “We can quickly retrieve the necessary data, enabling us to generate and deliver reports on key organizational metrics, both through daily dashboard updates and on-demand as needed.”

The centralized solution also gives the RWDI Finance team more accurate labor costing data. “By integrating our payroll software with Dynamics 365 Finance, we greatly improved the reliability and accuracy in reported labor expense. We can now report exact cost at a department level by importing actuals directly from our payroll system,” Quigley says. “Prior to using Dynamics 365 Finance, we posted journals to allocate payroll variances, which created uncertainty around costing by department.”

Designing the path to continued success

Porcellato sums up the company’s experience so far this way: “Overall, we’re just scratching the surface of what we can do in Dynamics 365. As we continue down this path, we know we’ll see more benefits from the integration between all these applications.”