energySEA Director and industry veteran Anthony Johnston had the vision to be able to build business applications for the business and integrate and extend existing applications quickly, seamlessly, and securely through intelligent business solutions. He saw that Microsoft’s portfolio of Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 (Sales and Business Central), Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI, would enable his teams to build solutions in hours instead of months, and easily connect systems with data to provide integrated solutions and comprehensive business analytics.
energySEA –
Microsoft Business Applications Case Study
From feasibility studies to construction and installation, energySEA supports the integration and higher penetration of renewable energy such as wind farms and solar through providing grid stability and energy storage. They deliver on this promise by enhancing electrical networks, reducing losses, and making energy consumption more efficient for all.
An Australian company, partnering with leading manufacturers globally, they deploy and integrate proven brands of energy transmission and distribution products in the grid or in an industrial environment.
To help deliver on this vision, a new ERP package from Microsoft - Dynamics 365 Business Central was selected. EnergySEA entered a partnership with Microsoft partner Dynamic Aspect.
The focus has been on the optimisation and digitisation of approval and financial processes and the automation of standard group reports. Plus, the added benefit of integrated document management and workflows all on the one cloud platform for lower total cost of ownership.
Automation with Microsoft connected business applications offers us convenience and the opportunity to be, and remain, future-oriented. Thanks to the cloud-based solution, we always stay up to date. This is essential in a digital landscape in which upgrades, and new features succeed each other at great speed.
- Anthony Johnston
Managing Director at energySEA Pty Ltd
MICROSOFT BUSINESS APPLICATIONS CASE STUDY
The Business Objective
The selection of Business Central for this Australian environmental technology business rested on three main factors of:
1
High value to license costs
High value to license costs — Dynamics 365 Business Central is predictable, user-based, and billed monthly;
2
Familiar interface
Familiar interface, built-in setup wizards, preconfigured templates, and tutorial reducing training time and enables quicker adoption. Deep integration with Office helps enhance productivity and usability for users and finally;
3
Microsoft offers a complete stack
Microsoft offers a complete stack – infrastructure, platform, and applications – with Azure, Dynamics 365 and Office 365.
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In addition, there was a desire to automate reports with a flexible and user-friendly tool that would provide staff with sufficient tools to implement changes themselves. In the old situation, datasets were often so complex that employees were dependent on an external IT party for the management of their BI tool. EnergySEA preferred a cloud-based solution to reduce the data center footprint and increase universal accessibility. In the already initiated transition to Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central was a logical next step in the global digitization and automation of workflows process.
DYNAMIC ASPECT
The SOLUTION
In the search for the right partner, EnergySEA soon found Microsoft Partner; Dynamic Aspect – a business with a team of experienced consultants and who are highly regarded in the field of Dynamics 365 Business Central and, in fact, the entire Microsoft business applications stack.
Dynamic Aspect worked alongside energySEA with the first preliminary study of the detailed engineering and financial processes and how energySEA's existing Microsoft environment could be exploited to maximise productivity, automation, governance and allow energySEA staff to focus on their business and less time managing documents. energySEA had already implemented Dynamics 365 Sales gaining familiarisation and success with Outlook integration, Opportunities, Accounts etc so platform was there to build upon.
This implementation is done hands-on using the train-the-trainer principle. Within the company, key users started working intensively with the Microsoft software from day one. The advantage of the SaaS environment is that it is immediately available. As a result, the standard Microsoft business applications could be shown directly at the workplace and key users could immediately get started.
Dynamic Aspect worked pragmatically and analysed which functionalities worked best and where adjustments might still need to be made. Thanks to online workshops and on-the-go learning, the key users turned out to be ambassadors for the implementation and support was created to spread the knowledge gained smoothly across the organisation.
DYNAMIC ASPECT
The RESULT
Because the key users have already started working with the new software from the very beginning, they felt a lot more familiar when going live than if they had been preceded by a process with a classic open analysis.
Thanks to the implementation of the Microsoft business application stack, and the collaboration with Dynamic Aspect, EnergySEA has a user-friendly in-house solution that makes it possible to work more effectively and efficiently and supporting all the operations across the complex business.
Even moving from one SaaS system to Microsoft's offering, a real reduction in costs has accompanied the increase in productivity. Just in terms of subscriptions costs have been halved!
Dedicated ownership and involvement of the energySEA team has ensured that an enormous amount of work has been done in a short time frame. The key users have enthusiastically embraced the new system. This, together with the optimal cooperation between EnergySEA and Dynamic Aspect, was an absolute condition for success.
- Anthony Johnston
Managing Director at energySEA Pty Ltd