Products/Tech Implemented: Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

Challenge

Allstar Marketing Group is a large-scale retailer that brings new and innovative consumer products to market through a unique process that is similar to a scientific lab: Discover, evaluate and test the products. Despite working with some of the largest e-commerce sites (e.g., Amazon, Target, Walmart, Home Depot, CVS, etc.), Allstar’s use of disparate systems (such as on-prem Sage MAS500, Excel, etc.) was a big problem for their scalability. Additionally, Allstar was struggling with a backwards supply chain (data flow from 3PL to ERP), no ability to add or swap out ordering channels or 3PLs, no intelligent fulfillment based on rules, grave concern about landed costs and an overall lack of visibility into their own data.

Simply put: they needed top-down reorganization to get on track to reaching their five-year expansion plan to become a $1 billion company by 2026.

Solution

While competitors had pieces of a solution, HCLTech’s willingness and ability to work alongside Microsoft in experimenting with unique platforms and trying new things was integral to the sale for this customer. Only HCLTech and Microsoft could deliver the end-to-end solution that addressed and mitigated all of Allstar’s key pain points. Our partnership is producing a complete ERP transformation with Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management (IoM) and Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain to deliver a true end-to-end system. Dynamics IoM has the capability to determine the optimal order fulfillment strategy using intelligent rules to minimize the ordinary time and costs associated with fulfillment processes, while allowing customers to have up-to-the-second visibility into where their orders are at any given moment. The unique implementation also included solutions for dealing with two of AllStar’s most pervasive challenges: landed costs and deductions management, and it won them over.

Impact/KPIs

This solution will grow and scale Allstar’s e-commerce capabilities to turn order fulfillment into a competitive advantage by automating and optimizing its orchestration, managing the entire order lifecycle while enabling the consumer to experience real-time visibility into order status and location. With the Dynamics 365 Landed Cost module, Allstar will also be tracking the costs associated with each voyage, shipload and/or container, allowing them to take ownership of the process before the product arrives to any of their warehouses. Dynamics F&SCM also delivers the legal component Allstar needed – using multiple legal entities within the same application for future needs of expansion and/or acquisition of other businesses. This complete ERP and F&SCM transformation allows Allstar visibility of data in one system, improving the business processes of the past, while simultaneously keeping ahead of industry standards.

An intelligent advantage

With AI, machine learning, and insights built into the IOM and the ERP platform, the company suddenly held all the pieces to its puzzle in one place. The solution provided intense visibility into the business and transformed how employees and management engaged with data and orders. Employees no longer have to touch every single order, only orders with exceptions, and the company can manage the entire order lifecycle through automation and optimization.

The platform now allows access to every point of the ERP system from one centralized space. As a result, the company can use unlimited 3PLs, grow digital commerce requirements, and has seen measurable improvements in landed costs and deduction management. In addition, the system allows for integrations with key apps outside the ecosystem, such as Shopify, Ship Station, and SPS Commerce. These connectors can scale with the business and each individual product.

Products/Tech Implemented:

• Dynamics 365 Finance
• Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
• Dynamics 365 Commerce
• Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management

Curacao is a Los Angeles-based department store with 13 stores locations and 1 central distribution center. They partnered with HCLTech to migrate their systems from their homegrown legacy ERP system of nearly three decades to a world-class Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain solution that will enable them to scale with their growing business. Dynamics 365 F&SCM will be their single source of truth.

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain modules that are in scope for the complete digital transformation:

• Organization Administration
• System Administration
• Common
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivables
• Asset Leasing
• Cash and Bank Management
• Cost Management and Landed Cost
• Customer Credit and Collections
• Human Resources
• General Ledger
• Inventory Management
• Master Planning
• Procurement and Sourcing
• Product Information Management
• Retail and Commerce
• Sales and Marketing
• Tax
• Warehouse Management

Additionally, we will be integrating with several of Curacao’s third-party solution providers, including AR System, Magento, emarsys, acima leasing, CFS, KOFAX, Avalara and SPS Commerce. Another key component is using Dual Write to write all Finance, Supply Chain and Commerce data back to CE.

Products/Tech Implemented: Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management (4,500+ seats)

In a direct SAP compete, Morgan Advanced Materials (Morgan) selected Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management (D365 F&SCM) as the single ERP solution for its 90 sites across 25 countries.

Morgan was still undecided on its platform of choice when Microsoft introduced HCLTech to the discussion. They went to multiple SIs for both SAP and Dynamics, so we faced two sets of competitors throughout the process.

Heavily influenced by the strength of HCLTech’s presentation on the key differences between the two systems and the distinct advantages of Dynamics 365, Morgan began to lean towards Microsoft and narrowed their choice to two preferred Dynamics partners: HCLTech and Avanade.

From there, we leveraged our wider HCLTech presence and global network to identify relevant insights into the account and ultimately offered a more compelling pitch. Our delivery team was heavily involved, impressing Morgan’s decision makers at every step.

Our sales approach benefitted from several Microsoft Challenger techniques. We successfully demonstrated our understanding of their industry and the unique challenges they could expect to face. In particular, our Prosci-certified change managers deftly addressed Morgan’s concerns about user adoption and advocacy. Strong references from Volvo Cars, Stanley Black and Decker and Bromford Housing also pushed Morgan in HCLTech’s direction.

Problem Statement

Having grown over time through a series of acquisitions, Morgan’s previous strategy was to give each business unit complete autonomy with respect to IT application choices. As a result, the company currently operates 38 unique instances of ERP systems globally, making cross-organization processing and reporting nearly impossible. Complicating matters further, many of the legacy ERPs are operating on degraded and depreciated infrastructures, exposing the businesses to increasing risks of failure, ongoing vulnerability and a constantly expanding set of operational inefficiencies.

Project Objective

Morgan aims to consolidate and centralize the ERP technology infrastructure across the entire organization using D365 F&SCM. The business goals of this global ERP initiative include:

• Standardizing business processes into a single core model across all business units and to align to one ERP solution to protect and support the business in the future
• Harmonize data across all business units
• Deliver sustainable improvements in product quality and customer satisfaction
• Enable use of always-up-to-date functionality to support improved decision making, provide business insights, create process automation and efficiencies, and drive cost reductions

Key drivers in the selection of D365 F&SCM rather than SAP:

• Precise fit of out-of-the-box functionality to Morgan’s requirements, confirming suitability to standardization strategy
• Familiar interface and ease of use leveraging Microsoft applications like Teams and Excel, essential to user adoption and advocacy
• SaaS solution meets requirement for continually updated system, eliminating risk of future compromised ERP platforms

Work started in 2022 and is ongoing. After enduring a recent crippling cyber-attack, the SCM implementation project is now on hold as all dedicated resources from HCLTech have been moved to “Operation Highlite,” an effort to get D365 Finance urgently implemented across the organization.

Update on 3/13/23: The HCLTech team designed, built, validated and deployed a D365 Finance, Sales and Procurement solution in 8 weeks from start to finish, which was just deployed over the weekend into their Production environment. We’re not sure this has ever been done before? Morgan is now live at one of their US sites, with the rollout to two additional US sites in the next two weeks. The team hit some real challenges due to the timeframe, but adherence to strong controls and a lot of dedication have meant we have successfully delivered a solution with no major issues reported to date. Our Think Team mantra was very evident over the weekend!

Tech Implemented

Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

Autolus researches cancer treatments, taking ordinary T Cells and turn them into "superhero" T Cells. In the midst of clinical trials and collecting funding, they are also preparing to go commercial – but going commercial requires stringent adherence to compliance requirements for medical treatments and research, particularly if they want to expand into North America.

They currently have offices in UK, Germany, Switzerland and USA (Maryland), and their next step to going commercial is building their own manufacturing site – a new state-of-the-art, 70,000 sq. ft. facility. With the new facility comes the need for a new GXP-compliant technology infrastructure for the business. An added wrinkle is that to operate in the US, the FDA requires a Bio Logix License, and compliance with this requirement means a Computer Software Validation must be conducted (systems and processes documented to the Nth degree, requiring the ongoing support of several specialists).

All of that to say this was a unique implementation with lots of moving parts. HCLTech was able to launch Dynamics 365 F&SCM for Autolus on time in early March of 2023. It is obviously too early for measurable KPIs, but Autolus plans to measure their success through:

• Compliance
• Efficiency from the beginning
• Scaling at speed

Update on 3/13/23: The HCLTech performed the cut-over data migration into the D365 F&SCM production environment over the weekend. We’re live!

Tech Implemented

Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Warehousing

The fundamental problem was they didn’t have a warehousing system that was compatible with the Japanese language characters – it was restricted only to English. They want to open a Harry Potter Experience in Tokyo, Japan, and in order to secure operations in Japan, having a platform that supported the Japanese language characters was an absolute necessity, and their existing solution simply couldn’t do it. Coupled with that, they needed a complete technological revamp to monitor and manage their retail inventory and stock values.

To integrate with users’ handheld devices to conduct automatic picking from their warehouse pick list, HCLTech implemented Dynamics 365 Warehousing to manage retail stock, underpinning the stock management in Power Finance. Given the critical nature of Warner Brothers’ stock management, particularly as it pertains to Japanese character sets and overall operating processes in Japan, Warner Brothers Studio Tours will be moving all their retail management over to Dynamics from Shopify.

The overwhelming benefit of our partnership with Warner Brothers Studio Tours is that they were able to go-live in Japan with Japanese characters, which is saving them hundreds of millions of Pounds. But the benefits don’t stop there – having an integrated retail and stock management solution and Dynamics warehousing, as well as the benefit of having it all built on Azure Cloud, allows for scalability and flexibility to adopt new sites globally – no matter what the language.

The ability to standardize all of their warehousing and inventory in Harry Potter Experience retail stores on a single platform has also increased the level of personalization available to consumers wanting to purchase goods (e.g., a personalized wand or t-shirt). Due to the success of this project, Warner Brothers Studio Tours wants to roll it out to their four other global locations – their Harry Potter Experiences and retail shops in Burbank, California and Watford in London, as well as the purely retail locations in New York City and the London-Heathrow Airport.

Products/Tech Implemented: Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 CE modules

Heico has been a unique project with several ups and downs along the way. Despite a few major challenges, HCLTech has delivered several global; solutions for the holding company. What makes the project interesting is that Heico has 17 unique companies, all on different ERP and CRM systems. As a result, they could not get a holistic view on all of the “stuff” their many companies actually do.

To remedy this, they scouted out different products (oracle, SAP, Microsoft). Microsoft won, of course, and Heico partnered with HCLTech to begin the migration of 17 companies to D365 Supply Chain – and half of those companies are also getting CE. We also used Dual Write, the software solution that passes info between F&SCM and CE which.

Scope

To ensure broad organizational alignment, provide risk management, and drive user adoption, Heico needed to engage best in class Change Management to satisfy over 1,500 global users. They needed a partner who would be able to orchestrate multiple, concurrent, and sequential software implementations across several disparate organizations.

Our Solution

We implemented a common platform for UI, integrations, and personalization configured for each individual holding company, as well as Dynamics 365 for a single repository of Finance & Supply Chain + Customer Engagement. We conducted data migration from multiple ERP’s, Mapics, AX, Infor, and others to Dynamics 365, while leveraging repeatable processes for integrations, training and testing at every opportunity. The following modules were included in the project scope (only Accounts Receivable was out of scope):

• Organizational Administration
• System Administration
• Human Resources
• General ledger
• Cash & Bank management
• Fixed Assets
• Accounts Payable
• Budgeting

Client Benefits: The benefits of our solution have been vast and ongoing:

• Seamless data flow and operational business benefits through a unified Dynamics 365 Platform, integrations and ISVs.
• Enabled automation, modern UI/UX that drove adoption and ROI.
• Heico now enjoys a broader view of metrics across operating companies through Power BI and Azure.
• They experienced reduction and elimination of duplicate/redundant entries and a lower TCO with the low/no code Dynamics 365 platform, coupled with HCLTech’s dedicated Application Management Support.
• Efficiency Gains
  • Reduced month-end Close Cycle Time
  • Enhanced reporting & analytics
  • Improved intercompany transactions (e.g., Cycle Time, Approval Time)
• Operating Cost Reductions
  • Improved generation of margin and cashflow
  • Improved visibility of business segment performance with access to relevant cost accounting
  • Reduced Admin costs due to streamline financial processes
  • Optimized headcount due to increased productivity throughout F&O
  • Reduced operating spend with financial process automation, encumbrance, budget planning, control and 3-way matching
  • Maintenance cost reduction from elimination of inhouse data storage, ERP server hosting, and lower headcount
  • Improved costs of ERP licensing due to the flexibility of the ERP licensing model
  • Reduction in procurement costs based on enhanced processes and automation across the supply chain
  • Reduced costs due to integration with other systems using the common data platform
• Quality Improvements
  • Automated order generation
  • Error Rate reduction rate
  • Real-time quality insights
• Customer Insight Enhancements
  • 360-degree view of the customer
  • Connected Customer Service Team
  • Customer relationship health and behavior

In the midst of the larger F&SCM project, HCLTech also led a 5-week Adoption & Sustainment (A&S) engagement necessitated by the fact that Heico has previously been engaged with another technology partner that struggled to deliver change management effectively, especially as it relates to UAT. We were brought in for course correction and proper change management stewardship of the multifaceted enterprise digital transformation program.

Specific challenges included:

• No standard process across the many different companies that were included in the transformation initiative
• Lack of training and communication to prepare users for UAT and go-live milestones
• No process documentation and training materials
• Lack of Subject Matter Expert (SME) availability and knowledge-transfer programs
• No awareness of best practices and out-of-the-box change management tools available from Microsoft

The primary objective of this initiative was to establish an effective and repeatable change management process that would ensure successful technology adoption and sustainment across all lines of business and within each individual operating company. Specific goals included:

• Define processes for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Training that are sustainable and repeatable
• Develop a structured training plan that allows end users sufficient time to learn that includes plentiful process documentation
• Provide best practices and suggested training material formats
• Provide sustainment plan recommendations to leverage following go-live

HCLTech’s A&S team studied the project plan implemented by the previous partner in an effort to develop a comprehensive gap analysis and then built the necessary strategy to fill those gaps, as well as align across Heico to create a scalable plan to execute across their different businesses over the course of the next several years. Then we created an Organizational Change Management Toolkit that meets their specific needs. This Toolkit is customizable based on the unique implementation requirements of the individual businesses under the Heico umbrella

Once each business unit is prepared, the A&S team will carry out the adoption plan execution, provide ongoing change management coaching, deliver initial customer and vendor communications, and conduct training and support analyses. Next steps include process-based train-the-trainer sessions, UAT, and validation.

As the new technology is deployed, the A&S team also provides ongoing production support, value realization, and sustainability measurements. Having access to this proven and repeatable process is a critical component of success for an organization with literally dozens of individual business units and companies.

With the rebirth of the change management component of the larger digital transformation project since the start of the HCLTech engagement, there has been a noticeable and renewed energy around user adoption and sustainment across all lines of business within Heico. Based in part on recognizing the failures of the work done with their previous technology partner and in part on the fresh approach and passion for change management brought by our team, Heico has a new appreciation for – and focus on – what needs to be done to be successful.

The city of Joondalup is a lighthouse win for Microsoft and HCLTech as the first Council in the APAC region to select Microsoft's full ecosystem (including Finance/CRM/SCM) to run their core operations from.

The City of Joondalup selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 and HCLTech’s Power Rates module to replace its on-premises core enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The Western Australian local council will improve customer service by gaining a 360-degree view of its interactions with ratepayers, while increasing the reliability, scalability and ease of use of its ERP system.

Like many councils around Australia, the City of Joondalup used an ERP solution from TechnologyOne to support operations such as rates payments and financial transactions, and help manage supply chains, service requests and human resources for its growing population. Starting in early 2020, the council engaged with Microsoft and HCLTech to evaluate using Microsoft cloud technology to replace its core business system.

In July 2022, the council selected HCLTech to implement a holistic, end-to-end Dynamics 365 platform to replace its core business platform. Implementation began in November 2022.

The Cloud-based platform will be augmented by HCLTech’s Power Rates module, as well as incorporate over 20 discrete areas including the management of Pool inspections, Development approvals, Waste management etc. This will help the Council streamline many key areas of operation from rates to customer requests in a customer centric 360 degree view, which enables the teams to better and faster service the customer. The council will also roll out Microsoft 365 to 850 employees and look to move other critical workloads to the Dynamics 365 platform and Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure.

As part of an exhaustive evaluation and tender process consisting of many platforms as well as Microsoft partners, HCLTech carried out a comprehensive gap analysis over eight workshops to assess the council’s existing technology stack and the capabilities of the Microsoft platform. This provided the foundation for Microsoft and HCLTech to conduct a business value assessment with the council’s IT, customer service and finance teams to understand their needs and how Microsoft’s cloud technologies could be used to address them.