In 2020, Bond Consulting Services (BCS) partnered with a medical device manufacturer that sells products and services to both patients, clinicians who service patients, and distributors of medical devices. The BCS Team implemented both Dynamics 365 Sales and Business Central solutions for the Client leveraging the BCS Power Connector for advanced integration between the two solutions. The integrated Dynamics 365 solution helped the Client facilitate a fully enabled sales process – empowering its sales team and sales process with integrations to Accounting, Inventory and Order Management functions. A description of the processes built on the Dynamics 365 Sales and Business Central platform is provided below.

Dynamics 365 Sales

The Client engaged BCS to implement a newly engineered Sales Process Flow using Dynamics 365 Sales. The D365 Sales solution uses traditional, out of the box CRM entities: Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Quotes, and Orders. The Sales Process Flow, as illustrated in the attached, is as follows:

• • Information is obtained from marketing campaigns, events, or third parties and imported or entered into D365 Sales as Leads
  • Leads are nurtured until qualified – which then generate associated Account and Contact data, which then can be used to develop an Opportunity
  • Opportunities are advanced through three stages:

1. Develop – facilitated by the Sales team’s pursuit during which it adds user-defined “demographics” and metrics to augment the Opportunity’s “profile”

2. Propose – incorporate Product (SKUs) and Pricing data from the Client’s accounting system (QuickBooks at the outset of this initiative which was eventually replaced by a Business Central solution – also implemented by BCS) to generate corresponding Quotes and accompanying documentation

3. Close – upon receiving an approval of the Quote by the Customer

• • Orders are generated upon successful closing of an Opportunity (a win) or upon submission from the Client’s website
  • A Customer Purchase Order # is generated and is used to generate a corresponding:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Invoice in Business Central
               2. Customer and Order in the Client’s Order Management solution

• • Invoices generated in Business Central are sent to the Customer for payment (terms apply)
  • Upon receiving payment from the Customer, the Order Fulfillment process is executed
  • Upon completion of Order Fulfillment, Order Status is changed to “Fulfilled” in D365 Sales
  • Order line items are updated in D365 Sales are updated to further reflect fulfillment

Business Central (NAV)

The Business Central solution implemented for the Client by BCS further enables the Client’s sales process by:

• • Maintaining inventory items and related data such as products and pricing to help populate Opportunities and Quotes facilitated by Sales
  • Establishing Customer and Vendor data to help facilitate the generation of Sales Orders and Invoices
  • Facilitating the Customer payments according to established terms for each Customer via its Accounts Payable module
  • Driving Order Fulfillment by providing the required product information (ex: serial #, product, etc)

Accurate timely execution of Sales was facilitated by an effective integration between Dynamics 365 Sales and Business Central using BCS Power Connector, which is a powerful and extensible integration build with Microsoft Power Automate.

In addition to enhancing the Sales and Order Management processes, Business Central also provides much more robust Accounting features than their prior QuickBooks solution, which helped the Client to facilitate the:

• • Accurate and timely recording of all transactions via a newly-defined Chart of Accounts, General Ledger with supporting Dimensions to satisfy organizational structure, bookkeeping, regulatory and tax reporting requirements
  • Carrying forward of balances and execution of 2020 transactions to provide an effective starting point from which accurate recording of operations as of the cut-over date were able to commence
  • Generation of financial reporting for the Client’s Executive Leadership – Board Members, Owners, CTO, and CFO

The deployed Dynamics 365 – Business Central integrated solution significantly enhanced sales enablement and accounting processing for the Client. Additional initiatives are in progress for the Client related to Customer Service. The BCS Team is leveraging the Dynamics 365 Customer Service Hub to provide an intelligent Service Management function in support of the Client’s warranty and augmented support plans, as well as augmented Marketing Campaigns via an integration between Dynamics 365 Sales and MailChimp to provide more intelligence on the success of customer outreach as a precursor to the Sales Process Flow.

BCS may also be engaged to leverage integrations between Business Central and tightly integrated third-party software to help augment the Client’s Manufacturing, Warehouse Management, Advanced Inventory, Production Scheduling, and Quality Control functions to further enhance the automation of their overall operations.

MainLine Investment Partners (MLIP) is a successful private equity firm that was first founded in 2011. The company is headquartered in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, but it provides investment advice and portfolio management services to high-growth companies throughout the U.S. MLIP focuses on investing in real estate assets, private wealth management firms, multifamily residential property management, and other operating businesses. MLIP is a leader in its field as the company has over 70 years of experience and is currently responsible for managing $1 billion of invested capital and assets.

Bond Consulting Services (BCS) first partnered with MLIP in 2015 to deploy Dynamics 365 Sales to manage investor communications and reporting.  The BCS Team helped to integrate Dynamics 365 Sales with Dynamics GP and other operational systems, enabling a collaborative sharing of data with MLIP, its partners and clients.  The solution included extensive custom reports for investment management and clients, including Power BI for dashboard views of key information for management.  MLIP uses Dynamics 365 Sales to track all client communications, enhancing its trusted relationships and ability to deliver value.  The efficient and successful deployment of Dynamics 365 Sales integrated with Dynamics GP has been instrumental in enabling growth in its portfolio and client base, while maintaining excellent client satisfaction.

Good Food Holdings is headquartered in Carson, California and it is the holding company for 5 prominent food retailing brands including Bristol Farms, New Seasons Market, Lazy Acres Natural Market, Metropolitan Market and New Leaf Community Markets. These brands offer a large variety of organic and specialty products that contribute to the overall wholesome culture and unique consumer experience. By focusing on delivering high-quality products with high-quality service, Good Food Holdings has become one of the top food holding companies in the United States.

In 2002, Bond Consulting Services (BCS) partnered with the specialty grocery store chain known as Bristol Farms. BCS team members worked closely with Bristol Farms to implement Dynamics GP to support Bristol Farm’s financial management requirements and rapid growth.  The BCS team and Bristol Farms developed extensive integrations between Dynamics GP and multiple operational systems to enable an integrated network of data and streamlined financial reporting from Dynamics GP.  Over the years, BCS assisted Bristol Farms with numerous enhancements including adding new modules and features, integrating additional operational systems, supporting multiple acquisitions of new retail brands, and developing extensive reporting capabilities including Power BI.

For nearly two decades, Bond Consulting Services has been a trusted and reliable partner to Bristol Farms, and has supported the grocery store chain through multiple acquisitions. Good Food Holdings acquired Bristol Farms in January of 2019, and it is now one of multiple key brands within the Good Food Holdings corporate family.

Exhart is a wholesale home and garden décor business that focuses on bringing innovation, color, and fun into homes across the United States. Exhart is a family owned and operated company that has been in business for over thirty years. Some of their popular garden products include colorful gnomes, whimsical wind chimes, elegant glass décor, efficient solar lighting, and adorable bird feeders. Exhart’s motto is “Happy Homes. Smiling Gardens.” 

As Exhart’s customer base and product line continued to expand, the company realized that they had outgrown QuickBooks and needed better business software and multi-channel capabilities to help manage and develop their business. After an extensive search for the right solution, Exhart selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the ecosystem to build upon, and SellerCloud to manage its multi-channel transactions.

BCS appreciated and related to Exhart’s mission of spreading joy, and we quickly got to work to support the amazing customer experience that Exhart provides. BCS quickly configured Business Central and Dynamics 365 for Sales, and developed a custom integration with SellerCloud. We worked closely with Exhart to train, test and support its cutover from QuickBooks to Dynamics 365 integrated with SellerCloud. BCS also deployed Power BI that provides powerful business dashboards that enable management to make better business decisions.  BCS continues to work closely with Exhart to enhance and support its Dynamics 365 solution.

Another impactful implementation of Business Central this year was for Ohio Mulch, a landscape supply company that produces and sells more mulch in Ohio than any other manufacturer. In business for more than 30 years, the company now has 24 retail stores and production facilities in South Georgia, North Kentucky, Dayton, Cincinnati and Columbus that manufacture high-quality mulch.

Back in 2006, Ohio Mulch deployed Dynamics NAV and heavily customized the application to accommodate its unique operations. The customizations made upgrades challenging and expensive, so they continued to use the old version of Dynamics NAV through 2019. In January 2020, BCS began working with Ohio Mulch on a rapid migration from the old application to Dynamics 365 Business Central in the cloud. Once again, Ohio Mulch required several customizations unique to their business. BCS worked closely with the Ohio Mulch project team to implement customizations for negative inventory, matching freight accruals to sales orders, Bill of Lading, and converting base units of measure for pallets. Ohio Mulch went live with Business Central on March 1, 2020.

One of our most impactful Business Central implementations this year was for Treehouse, a Seattle-based non-profit that provides opportunities and support to youth in foster care to pursue their dreams and launch successfully into adulthood.  The Treehouse Store offers a free shopping experience for youth to pick out clothing, sporting goods, games, school supplies and books at no cost.  Through its Holiday Magic program, Treehouse also coordinates thousands of gifts to be sent to youth in foster care across the state of Washington during the holidays.  Treehouse had been using a combination of spreadsheets and a non-integrated Point-of-Sale (POS) solution to record donations and distribution. Treehouse also had been using Dynamics CRM for tracking certain critical information about its clients and visits to the Store. This was not integrated with the POS or Holiday Magic tracking.

BCS worked with Treehouse Management to design, customize and deploy an integrated Inventory and cost tracking solution using Business Central, with a custom bar code scanning and POS solution to track all incoming donations from donors and outgoing items to kids.  Additionally, BCS developed a bilingual webform that integrates with Dynamics CRM to manage requests for gifts at the holidays.  BCS worked with Treehouse to synchronize other relevant donation and distribution data back into Dynamics CRM for more complete visibility of its impact on the community.