Navigating sky-high growth with Dynamics 365 Finance

Jet2.com, the UK’s third-largest holiday tour and scheduled airline operator, has witnessed phenomenal growth, servicing more than 14.4 million passengers in 2023, up from 300,000 annual customers just a few years ago.

With a vision to become the UK’s leading travel and leisure business, Jet2.com desperately needed to modernize its legacy financial systems to support rapid expansion while remaining a low-cost option that appeals to a wide customer base.

The Challenge: Jet2.com’s growth was hindered by an outdated, on-premises financial system consisting of more than 25 legacy applications with limited capabilities. This setup struggled to support the company’s year-over-year growth, necessitating a transformation to a more modern, scalable and responsive system.

The Objective: Jet2.com aimed to transition to a solution that was not only robust and agile, but also buttressed by comprehensive application support management for ongoing support and governance. The project’s primary goals were fivefold:

• Accommodate extensive growth
• Increase automation
• Drive financial best practices to maintain and enhance internal financial controls
• Improve self-service reporting capabilities
• Enable detailed analytics for greater transparency

The Solution: HCLTech spearheaded the digital transformation by decommissioning several bespoke systems and replacing various legacy applications with a unified solution. By switching to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management, Jet2.com was able to standardize and streamline their ERP functions to lay a foundation for scalable growth and operational excellence.

The Impact: The key results achieved were:

• Scalable operations: Transition to Dynamics 365 enabled Jet2.com to seamlessly scale operations and accommodate growth to over 14.4 million passengers annually.
• Reduced administrative costs: Implementation of Kofax RPA OCR automation for processing over 800,000 invoices yearly led to less administrative spend and enhanced efficiency.
• TCO savings: £4 million in total cost of ownership savings demonstrates significant cost efficiency.
• Affordability: The efficiency afforded by the new system enables Jet2.com to continue offering low-cost airfare and vacation packages to directly benefit customers.
• Sustainability strategy support: Dynamics 365 provides comprehensive insights into financial performance and operational efficiency, allowing for targeted investments in sustainable aviation technologies. This aligns with Jet2.com’s commitment to environmental responsibility and supports their pledge to tackle climate change.

Streamlining for efficiency and sustainability

Morgan Advanced Materials is on a mission to enhance sustainability and improve the quality of life through the advanced materials they produce. With a diverse portfolio ranging from medical components to thermal insulation solutions, Morgan aims to reduce energy consumption and emissions across various industries. Transitioning away from legacy systems was necessary to sustain their innovative efforts.

The Challenge: Through various acquisitions, Morgan had accumulated 38 unique instances of ERP systems globally. These disparate systems led to operational inefficiencies, significant cybersecurity risks and additional costs, making cross-organization processing and reporting nearly impossible. The urgent — yet daunting — need to unify their global operations under one system couldn’t be ignored.

The Objective: Morgan needed a solution that could be standardized across the board to minimize customizations, reduce costs and ensure ease of use. When a cyberattack occurred during, but unrelated to, deployment, the goalposts shifted accordingly to prioritize rapid deployment of a new, secure financial management system companywide.

The Solution: HCLTech stepped in to help Morgan dismantle over three dozen ERP systems by consolidating and centralizing their ERP technology infrastructure with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. The focus was on leveraging out-of-the-box functionality to streamline processes across the organization, significantly reducing the time and effort required for deployment. In turn, we were able to design, build, validate and deploy a complete Dynamics 365 ERP system in just eight weeks, addressing security vulnerabilities in the process.

The Impact: The key results achieved were:

• Standardization and efficiency: The move to Dynamics 365 centralized financial operations by eliminating previously disparate systems. This unified approach makes cross-organizational processes more cohesive while cutting costs and improving overall efficiency.
• Ease of use: The solution provided a user-friendly interface, simplifying operations for Morgan’s employees and significantly reducing time spent on manual processes.
• Enhanced cybersecurity: The rapid deployment of Dynamics 365 Finance addressed and mitigated cybersecurity vulnerabilities, which helped Morgan maintain trust in the marketplace.
• Reduced carbon footprint: Transitioning from 38 on-premises legacy systems to the cloud has the secondary benefit of reducing Morgan’s carbon footprint, taking a step toward environmental sustainability.

Supporting communities with Dynamics 365 Finance

Dedicating itself to offering affordable homes, Saffron Housing Trust manages over 7,500 properties across the UK. With a mission to inspire trust and community, Saffron’s digital transformation journey is intertwined with their strategic goals of improving living conditions and enhancing tenant experiences.

The Challenge: Saffron was growing rapidly but found themselves operating without the tools necessary to scale effectively. The company was dealing with fragmentation, a limited technological footprint and the absence of cohesive internal structures and processes.

Managing the financial aspects of thousands of properties, each representing significant asset value, necessitated advanced predictive analytics that could efficiently manage cash flow. To further complicate matters, Saffron lacked the automation necessary to swiftly manage monthly invoices for myriad preventative maintenance requirements and repair needs.

The Objective: Saffron needed to increase organizational cohesion and support their internal processes with a strong, scalable foundation that fit their future. A primary goal was to improve automation capabilities to ease the financial operations burden of managing 5,000+ invoices a month. Saffron was looking for a partner proficient in best-in-class technology and the capacity to scale.

The Solution: By implementing Dynamics 365 Finance, HCLTech was able to introduce a stable, backend system that provides the perfect foundation to help Saffron comfortably expand and gradually integrate more sophisticated technologies over time. Incorporating Kofax OCR ingestion technology marked a significant leap toward reducing manual workload and streamlining financial operations by automating invoice keying and matching. Saffron is also looking to roll out Microsoft’s AI-based OCR to fortify their system with the most advanced AI, ML and RPA, all in one unified unit.

Using our accelerator PowerFinance for D365, we were able to deploy the system within six months.

The Impact: The key results achieved were:

• Foundation for growth: The project laid the groundwork for future process improvements within Saffron, setting the stage for scalable growth. To that end, HCLTech offers a growth path through PowerProperty for D365, our integrated accelerator for the property market.
• Increased organizational agility: Enhanced data interrogation capabilities helped Saffron overcome limitations caused by fragmented data. This allows them to make better decisions, faster.
• Improved financial rating potential: The enhanced financial oversight and transparency facilitated by Dynamics 365 Finance directly contribute to Saffron’s ability to demonstrate robust financial control to the UK government. Positive ratings positively affect borrowing capabilities.
• Financial control and transparency: Optimizing financial operations has positioned Saffron to better allocate resources toward significant investments in homes and communities, aligning with their goal to double annual investment by 2030.

Steering toward future-ready digital transformation

Yanmar is a global leader in manufacturing forklifts, tractors and other heavy machinery. Yanmar America focuses on delivering a diverse range of products and services across North and Latin America. Through its partnership with HCLTech, Yanmar America is looking to roll out an enterprise platform to replace an outdated on-premises Oracle solution that’s limiting operational agility and scalability.

The Challenge: Due to its inability to adapt to changing business needs, Yanmar’s homegrown, on-premises Oracle solution is hindering their ability to focus on business growth. The company needs to support 200 users in a single entity and is in favor of a modern, scalable SaaS-based platform that will empower end users to focus on the business instead of on the technology that runs it.

The Objective: The primary goal is to lay a solid foundation for Yanmar’s growth while enabling long-term scalability. The company also wants to use as much out-of-the-box functionality as possible to get the most ROI as quickly as possible.

The Solution: Beating out SAP and Infor, HCLTech was chosen to implement a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management solution to support Yanmar’s operations more effectively. HCLTech plans to meticulously migrate critical business components — including the chart of accounts, customer and vendor details, and inventory management — from the legacy Oracle system to Dynamics 365. The tremendous project, set to unfold over 10 months, is designed to transform Yanmar’s technological backbone to make the company more resilient and adaptable.

Although it’s anticipated that Dynamics 365’s standard, out-of-the-box features might need augmentation through customization, the aim is to keep these to a minimum to leverage Dynamics 365’s inherent efficiencies.

The Impact: The key results anticipated are:

• Foundational transformation: Yanmar’s shift to Dynamics 365 will mark the beginning of a comprehensive digital transformation, setting the stage for significant growth and innovation.
• Future opportunities: The transition opens vast opportunities for leveraging Microsoft’s ecosystem, including the Power Platform and Power Apps, to further enhance operational efficiency and data accessibility for decision making.
• Strategic partnership: HCLTech’s role will extend beyond the implementation. We anticipate future collaborations to develop custom solutions that align with Yanmar’s evolving needs. This will reinforce their move toward becoming a more Microsoft-centric organization.