Dynamics 365 ERP: Companies who have found success by moving to the cloud

Migrating to the cloud with Microsoft Dynamics 365’s enterprise resource platform (ERP) is a smart, strategic move to help ensure the long-term health of your company. Here are some efficiencies that organizations across a diverse spectrum of industries and sizes have reaped by implementing a cloud instance of Microsoft Dynamics 365’s ERP:

Greater ROI

One of the biggest benefits of employing Dynamics 365 is a direct, positive impact on ROI. On-premises ERPs incur a higher operating cost since they require greater IT support, security infrastructure, and manual updating. Cloud-based ERP platforms, on the other hand, free up your organization’s financial resources to be directed elsewhere—such as product research or innovative new customer experiences.

  • Take geosynthetics company and Dynamics 365 customer GSE Environmental, for example. The company had been plagued for years by siloed data management systems that made correlation—and collaboration—almost impossible. Worse yet, an antiquated maintenance architecture kept GSE’s IT staff bogged down with menial tasks, rather than focused on more high-value activities. GSE’s leadership recognized the need to streamline and moved its data management to the cloud. Centralized data management has reduced on-premise IT infrastructure and allowed the company to refocus on IT productivity while cutting the department’s spend by more than 70 percent.
  • The majority of specialty foods company Hickory Farms sales volume comes during the 2-month-long holiday season. It needed to find a platform that would efficiently manage inventory and order data between warehouse and distribution center staffs. Dynamics 365 did exactly that, giving Hickory Farms real-time data that can be sent and viewed via mobile devices and enabling employees to make decisions—and serve customers—faster.

Change management

Moving your business to the cloud may seem daunting from both a technical and organizational standpoint. But the Dynamics 365 platform, paired with Microsoft’s commitment to partnership, makes for an efficient migration process.

  • Shipping giant Maersk was in a precarious position. Its five data centers, located around the globe, were unable to speak with one another, which restricted employees from being able to get an accurate sense of critical customer information. Adding to the challenge? The on-premises datacenters were reaching capacity, which caused lags and gaps in the data flow. Making the shift to the cloud appeared to be out of reach, as Maersk’s data housed 80 business applications and more than 14.4 million user files. It became clear that embracing change was essential to keeping the organization afloat, and leadership decided to close the datacenters within a year. Maersk partnered with Microsoft to seamlessly move its data to the cloud on the Microsoft Azure platform, enabling a free flow of secure data to employees around the globe. And the migration process required half as much time as in the initial estimate, with all five datacenters closed and their data migrated in just six months.
  • Italian aircraft parts manufacturer Umbra Group, which wanted to reduce IT costs and streamline data flow amongst its five global facilities, also saw the need to migrate to the cloud. Umbra chose Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations as its cloud ERP system, ensuring its facilities remained up to date and connected while not interfering with the customizations it had already applied to its AX deployment.

Data as an asset

By moving to the cloud with Dynamics 365 ERP, your data can be optimized through AI and machine learning, ultimately yielding greater value than if stored on-premises. This is a key reason why 59 percent of businesses say they would consider a cloud-based ERP model in their next implementation.

  • Maersk’s data challenge went beyond data accessibility and security—the leadership knew its stored data wasn’t working as hard as it could be. When Maersk moved to the cloud, not only did it improve its data security and accessibility, but it is now able to predict maintenance needs. The migration has reduced overall operations costs, unearthed new revenue streams, and allowed leadership to focus on developing new products and services.
  • Global weather company AccuWeather handles 17 billion daily data requests from 1.5 billion people—a ideal environment for advertisers. But weather waits for no one, and AccuWeather was struggling to reconcile the relationship between fleeting weather events and advertisers trying to reach affected markets. An outdated sales system lacking real-time inventory data hindered efforts to be truly responsive. But by switching to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, AccuWeather is now able to track data in near real-time, enabling hour-by-hour decisions on how to best allocate inventory for advertiser need.

Regardless of your industry or company size, Microsoft Dynamics 365’s ERP platform can help provide seamless migration to the cloud, more efficient data management, streamlined IT, and greater security. Prepare your company for strong future growth by scheduling a consult today.