Managed Services for Dynamics 365 – also for new features and functionalities

You probably know Managed Services as the ‘support department’ of Focus Enterprise Solutions. If you have questions about your Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management (F&O) environment or experience problems, they are your first point of contact. But did you know that you can contact them not only with questions and problems, but also if you want to have new functionality added? Jelmer Diepenbroek, Consultant at Focus Enterprise Solutions, explains what is possible.

Changes to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management

“If you want to add a new functionality to your system, you can ask Managed Services. For example, if a process has changed in your organization, or because you think a process can be more efficient,” says Jelmer. “Then Managed Services will start with a rough estimate of the extent of the desired change. If we expect it to take a week or more of work, we turn it into a project. If it can be done faster, we will immediately pick it up ourselves.”

A clear process for changes

“The process for changes is actually very simple. When we know approximately how big the change is, we start coming up with a solution. If the change concerns customization, we will check with a developer whether it is feasible. If that is the case, we write a Functional Design. In it, we lay down what the solution will look like and how it will work. We will then give you an accurate estimate of hours and ask if you agree with it.

If you give us the green light, we’ll start developing. This process also takes place in clear steps: we develop, then we test and then the customer has to test. If you don’t discover any strange things during that test, we can put the new functionality live on your production environment and you can make full use of it,” he continues.

“The changes we make for customers are often related to financial functionalities or are supply chain or production related. But we also do interfacing for clients. So it’s very diverse. We also regularly create PowerApps that we link to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management (also known as Dynamics Finance & Operations). For example, you can start or execute certain processes outside of these ERP systems.

Real-life examples

What changes do you have to think about? A few examples of the changes we make for our customers:

PowerApp Vendor Features for Retail Customer

One of our retail customers, who is currently still using AX2012, has a steadily growing number of supplier characteristics that cannot be defined as standard within ERP. To create new attributes and adjust the value per supplier, we have developed a PowerApp that manages this data in an Azure SQL database. This enables them to create new attributes within ERP without customization and to easily implement (bulk) mutations on these attributes. This saves them time and customization, and also makes the functionality easy to apply when they make the transition to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management.

Invoicing interface

Another example is a customer with several private limited companies,” Jelmer continues. “They wanted to be able to create invoices for their customers for all those companies in one package. So we built an interface that creates the invoices in Dynamics 365. The invoices are booked directly and sent to the customers by e-mail. This process is fully automated.

New functionality is also possible for AX

We don’t just develop new functionalities for Dynamics 365 Finance: even if you haven’t taken the step to the cloud yet and are using, for example, AX2012, we can develop new functionality for you.

If you are planning to make the transition to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management in the near future, we are happy to think along with you to ensure that you can also use the change in your new ERP system. This way, the investment will last a lot longer.

Want to know more?

Our Managed Services department is more than just a support department and Managed Services for Dynamics 365. Would you like to know more about the possibilities that Focus Enterprise Solutions can offer your organization? Do you want to add a feature to your ERP package, or are you looking for a partner for the implementation of Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management (F&O)? Please feel free to contact us!