Tag: microsoft dynamics 365

Trident Information System | Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner & IBM Business Partner | > microsoft dynamics 365
dynamics 365 business central
December 28, 20200

Learn how an electronics manufacturer unifies data and gains agility using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management

Bel Fuse designs, manufactures, and markets electronic circuits products at 24 manufacturing locations across North America, Europe, and Asia. The company’s existing enterprise resource planning solution was highly customized and expensive to maintain, so it decided to deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Bel Fuse unified data and can now more easily manage its supply chain operations and finance processes, gaining more agility to respond quickly to changes in the market or its suppliers.

With Dynamics 365, we save nearly USD2 million per year in IT service and support fees compared to our previous, highly customized solution.

Mark Hodkinson: Vice President of Finance for the Bel Power Solutions Group

Bel Fuse

Essential step in the supply chain

A typical consumer might interact with Bel Fuse products and not even know it. The manufacturer makes the components that power, protect, and connect electronic circuits in products we use every day. Bel Fuse is usually in the middle of the supply chain, relying on smaller parts from its suppliers before passing components on to the manufacturers that create finished products.

Founded in 1949, the company has grown significantly in the last 20 years through acquisitions. It has seven business groups, including Bel Power Solutions, which it acquired in 2014. Bel Power Solutions makes the power conversion products for server and storage networks at large server farms and in industrial products like the power sources in hybrid electric vehicles and trains.

To manage its enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes, Bel Power Solutions used a legacy version of Oracle that was highly customized and difficult to update. The version was outdated and the month-to-month costs and support for the solution were expensive.

With different business units using different ERP systems, Bel Fuse wanted to find an affordable solution to unify the company’s finance and operations processes, starting with Bel Power Solutions. Bel Fuse also needed a solution that would support its material requirements planning (MRP) process, a production planning, scheduling, and inventory control system to manage its manufacturing processes.

“Our MRP processing goes in both directions—we require a full dataset and forecasting of what’s coming to us and what’s going out,” says Scott Hasterlik, Director Global IT at Bel Fuse. “We have power assets with 500 components and 65,000 SKUs, so we needed a robust solution to share nonstandard information quickly.”

An integrated solution for finance and operations

After careful evaluation, Bel Fuse found that Microsoft Dynamics 365 had the right capabilities at the right price for the company’s needs. With Dynamics 365, Bel Fuse had a single system for the first time, the ability to report globally, and a solution that was intuitive to use and easy to add users.

Bel Fuse uses Dynamics 365 Finance to automate its financial operations, monitor performance in real time, predict future outcomes, and make data-driven decisions. For operations, the company deployed Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, which includes an MRP function and AI to improve visibility across its global supply chain and to improve manufacturing productivity.

To aid the quick, seamless deployment process, Bel Fuse worked with Flintfox, a Gold competency member of the Microsoft Partner Network. “Flintfox jumped in, understood what we wanted to accomplish, and helped us move forward on budget,” says Hasterlik. “Flintfox has been a fantastic partner and is still our partner of record.”

A wide range of Bel Power Solutions employees now rely on the Finance and Supply Chain Management business applications. Users include staff in customer service, quality assurance, demand and product returns, manufacturing and supply chain ordering, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and engineering. “From decision makers to factory floor managers, everyone is working in Dynamics 365, staying connected and accessing valuable data,” says Stefan Naude, General Manager, Slovakia, at Bel Fuse.

Reduced costs, disparate systems eliminated

Bel Fuse accomplished its central goal—to reduce the high costs of its previous ERP system while bringing data together in one solution. The company built the capacity it needed without a lot of customizations, helping ensure that the solution would stay flexible in the future. “With Dynamics 365, we save nearly USD2 million per year in IT service and support fees compared to our previous, highly customized solution,” says Mark Hodkinson, Vice President of Finance for the Bel Power Solutions Group at Bel Fuse.

Bel Fuse also reduced costs because it now has the tools to fulfill more of its own finance needs internally. For example, a Bel Fuse engineering and distribution site in Italy previously paid an outside firm to do its accounting. “It was easy to move the Italy site into Dynamics 365 and transfer all that work internally to our team in Slovakia,” says Hodkinson. “Now our own team manages the facility’s day-to-day finances even though they aren’t located in Italy. With a common system, we have better access to our own internal talent.”

Increased visibility and agility

With Dynamics 365, Bel Fuse gained a more global view of financial data and can perform more accurate forecasting. “I always view orders and revenue from a global perspective because the locations are all connected and have so many intercompany transactions,” says Hodkinson. “I rely on Dynamics 365 to help me make sense of complex financial histories to stay on top of complicated billing and payment processes at multiple sites.”

With ERP data now centralized and easy to access in the cloud, Bel Fuse can respond with more agility to complex, changing circumstances. When employees in Italy, China, and other countries needed to work from home during the COVID-19 crisis, the company was able to effectively run remote finance and supply chain operations. “We kept all our finance functions moving forward even though we don’t have anyone physically in the office,” says Hodkinson. “We were impressed that our team was able to get everything done while working from home for the first time, and I think that speaks to how intuitive Dynamics 365 Finance was for our team.”

As a mid-chain supplier, Bel Fuse is committed to continuing its operations on time and not becoming a bottleneck in the process. With the MRP functionality in Dynamics 365, the company has a deeper, more precise view into its supply chain and more flexibility when its suppliers face disruptions. Employees use self-generating reports to review sales orders and purchase orders and to track factory production.

“Our system quickly shows us when parts haven’t arrived on time, and we can pivot to load our production with parts that are available,” says Naude. “With Dynamics 365, we streamlined our planning and have flexibility to adapt to our vendors and adjust our inventory—all while remaining a reliable supplier.”

dynamics 365 business central
December 5, 20200

Reinvent business productivity with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is an all-in-one business management solution that helps businesses manage financials, sales, service and operations easier and faster from day one. This e-book explores how the solution integrates with Office 365 to
connect business processes and personal productivity like never before, bringing insight and efficiency to your daily tasks

Uncategorized
June 18, 20200

Is your business ready to take supply chain management to the next level?

When you lack deep visibility and insight into your supply chain, you leave money on the table

It turns out what you don’t know as a manufacturer can and will hurt you. For too long, manufacturers have settled for siloed and inconsistent information, as well as manual processes, to understand and manage their supply chain. Why? Because for a long time, these systems were good enough to keep production going.

But plenty of manufacturers don’t want to settle for good enough. IDC predicts that by 2019, 50% of manufacturing supply chains will have benefited from digital transformation, and the remainder will be held back by outdated business models or functional structures. Smart manufacturers understand that supply chain transformation is necessary. They are connecting assets across their factories, gaining visibility into their supply chain, and acting on insights from increased visibility to address inefficiency, as well as increase customer satisfaction and margins.

Don’t accept operational inefficiencies as a limit on your business

Supply chain management is complex, so doing it right requires a solution that simplifies and consolidates disparate information, while retaining flexibility. Data from the sales process, suppliers, order fulfillment, product performance, and customer service all matter for a full understanding of the supply chain. The core tools for accomplishing this fall into three categories: IoT-enabled visibility and services, powerful analytics, and cloud-delivered data visualizations.

Like many aspects of manufacturing, IoT is the starting point. The best way to lower production costs is by using a single IoT-friendly platform to integrate back and front office processes. Using IoT-based modeling to create digital twins, manufacturers can understand in real-time the amount of wear and tear on parts and adjust designs in response. This insight can help identify simple inefficiencies like sourcing a part from the company that’s always supplied it, rather than buying a similarly-performing part at a lower cost from another supplier.

Powerful analytics is the next step in transforming your supply chain. A truly intelligent system for supply chain management dynamically adjusts distribution, as well as production, to accelerate the speed of delivery. By using built-in analytics and machine learning, public data like weather conditions can be used to create richer, more accurate schedules and delivery forecasts. On top of that, opportunities to consolidate or expedite shipments can be automatically identified using artificial intelligence—passing lower shipping and order fulfillment costs on to customers.

Finally, consolidating all this information won’t completely optimize your supply chain without the ability to easily visualize and manage it. That’s why a real-time and mobile-delivered view is so crucial. Understanding how to solve problems is hard enough; there’s no need to complicate it further by using different systems to identify where problems are occurring. Decision makers on the factory floor or in global headquarters need instant access to relevant information, and the collaborative power to communicate with or work alongside employees anywhere in the world. These investments in operations put manufacturers in position to embrace new technology and adjust to whatever business challenges they may be facing.

Get the tools to transform with Microsoft Dynamics 365

The power of a supply chain management and operations platform that combines all these capabilities at cloud speed and scale is obvious. Companies positioned to digitally transform their supply chains will see accelerated time to market and reduced cost to enter new markets or scale new lines of business. Microsoft supports flexibility in deployment, enabling you to leverage existing investments while expanding with either a cloud or a hybrid model that includes both on-prem and cloud systems. That can shorten deployment from months to days and ensure security and analytics capabilities are consistent across every location and tuned appropriately for every team.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 ends the artificial separation of ERP and CRM and makes it easy for employees to collaborate and even role-switch to engage customers or address supply chain issues. Only Dynamics 365 unites the front office and the back office with a single end-to-end system for managing every aspect of your business, all backed by industry-leading enterprise cloud. That means manufacturers can develop at the pace and scale that’s right for them, while taking advantage of current investments such as existing productivity and technology stacks. With Microsoft, consistent development practices and R&D investments combine to offer manufacturers rich analytics, embedded intelligence, partner-created applications, and the ability to collaborate worldwide.

Uncategorized
April 13, 20200

Reduce supply chain disruptions with AI, IoT, and mixed reality

Disruptions in global supply chains have significantly increased over the last decade, fueled by a myriad of triggers ranging from trade wars, demand surges from social marketing, natural disasters, and most recently, the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Updates to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management in the 2020 release wave 1 help organizations proactively transform every aspect of manufacturing and supply chain operations to reduce disruptions. These new and updated capabilities drive automation and reduce downtime using IoT and mixed reality, and provide the agility to re-plan production in real time to dynamically changing demand. In fact, the agility enabled by Supply Chain Management is currently being leveraged by a consortium of major UK industrial, technology, and engineering businesses from across the aerospace, automotive, and medical sectors that has come together to produce medical ventilators for the NHS.

Reducing the risk of supply chain disruptions

As the threat of disruptions increase, companies are pressured to ask if the supply chain is ready for the next event, pushing them to build a more resilient supply chain to ensure business continuity for them and their customers in the most cost-effective manner. More companies will start buffering for risks and move from a “Just-in time” mentality to a “Just-in case” mentality. Factories will need to transform rapidly to adapt to change, serving a wider range of products produced in smaller batches with lower set up time, faster throughput, and the ability to quickly respond to fluctuating demand and customer expectations. Companies are likely to move from single supplier to multi-supplier and single location to multi-location models for mission critical parts even if it is cost prohibitive in order to reduce the impact of supply chain disruptions.

To reach this optimal state of agility and delivery speed, manufacturers need to adapt every aspect of the supply chain to enable tools, equipment, and people to become instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent—a state of persistent adaptive learning and optimization as more data is available to tighten links between manufacturers, suppliers, and customers.

The latest release from Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management enables customers to reach this optimal state by proactively transforming their manufacturing and supply chain with predictive insights and intelligence from AI, IoT, and mixed reality—across planning, production, inventory, warehouse, and transportation management—to maximize operational efficiency, product quality, and profitability.

Train workers faster with integrated mixed reality learning experiences

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is now integrated with Dynamics 365 Guides to help mainstream mixed reality for manufacturing. Companies can deliver a faster ROI by getting the workforce trained sooner with fewer trainers and with an interactive learning experience. Workforce efficiency can skyrocket with step-by-step instructions that guide employees to the tools and parts they need and how to use them in real work situations, available at a glance on a Microsoft HoloLens device that keeps their hands free to do the work.

Dynamics 365 Guides can not only eliminate costly errors in production but also improve workforce safety. Companies can significantly reduce asset downtime by making asset maintenance skillset-agnostic and avoid costly waiting time for a specific expert to perform maintenance on an asset. The guides are extremely easy to author and do not require any coding. A guide can be authored by simply writing the step-by-step instructions on a PC followed by picking and placing the holographic parts and inbuilt icons on the machine where the work is happening.

Learn how to use Dynamics 365 Guides
Introducing Dynamics 365 Guides for HoloLens 2

Dispatch the right resources at the right time

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is now integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service. Customers can significantly reduce downtime of geographically dispersed mission critical assets by automating field service operations so that the right resources—workforce, machines, parts, and tools—are available at the right place, at the right time, to proactively maintain them.

Companies can improve the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) of their geographically dispersed mission critical assets by performing predictive maintenance based on real-time performance data from IoT and field data from Dynamics 365 Field Service. Traditionally, disparate systems hinder the ability to accurately forecast demand for critical and expensive parts frequently used in both service and new production. Due to lack of forecasting for service demand, companies constantly take parts from production to fulfill the service demand, and vice versa, to deliver good customer service. This often creates a shortage for new production and significantly impacts on time delivery to new customers. As a result, the company is unable to deliver a delightful customer experience on both fronts. This integration will eliminate the need for disparate systems and significantly improve the forecast accuracy of these mission-critical parts due to real time tracking in the service supply chain.

Seamlessly integrate IoT capabilities

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management now offers out-of-the-box IoT capabilities that leverage Microsoft Azure IoT Hub to connect signals from mission-critical assets with business transaction data. Manufacturers can improve uptime, throughput, and quality by proactively managing shop floor and equipment operations with a real-time view of their entire production and stock. This will significantly reduce costly downtime of business-critical equipment by performing predictive maintenance before disruptive failures occur. There is no coding required to implement these out-of-the-box IoT scenarios on your manufacturing floor today.

Learn more on how Majan is using Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and IoT Intelligence customer spotlight with Majans

Improve on-time delivery with real-time production planning

The Planning Optimization Add-in for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management enables companies to improve on-time delivery by performing production planning in real time, accounting for dynamically changing customer demand, material availability, and capacity constraints across multiple sites and warehouses. It also enables customers to improve inventory turns by right-sizing inventory levels based on dynamically changing customer demand and capacity constraints. This helps eliminate excess and reduces slow moving inventory. Planning Optimization Add-in for Retail and Distribution is available and Production planning is currently in preview.

Uncategorized
February 29, 20200

When do you know that your business needs a CRM software?

Customer Relationship Management is a process of managing or organizing prospects throughout the sales life cycle. The more the advancement in serving the clients, the more will be the payment stream for the Company. Trident’s CRM software solutions happen to be one of the most effective and efficient CRM software that could easily cut overhead costs and give highlights which demonstrate helpful to different business firms.

Many CRM software programs available have several features that can be used or restricted – so in effect a business can modify to make their own CRM software. However, utilizing CRM software gives various advantages to both organizations and customers and that is the reason each genuine business has implemented some of the other CRM applications.

So who can opt for Trident’s CRM software?

A simple response to that question would be “Any business with customers would utilize CRM“. However, in the real world, it is not just as simple as that. Choosing an appropriate CRM software solely depends upon the business process along with a range of profitable features. Below are the type of Businesses that could gain benefit from using Trident’s CRM software solutions.

1- The business that uses any form of Marketing: 

For any business that uses marketing campaigns to promote, sell or advertise their products or services in the market through various communication mediums such as phone, email, etc. Reaching to customers in bulk within a short period as well as recording the response on the go makes it more effective to manage the marketing process.

2- A business that deals with B2B and B2C Sales:

For any business that tends to cope up with the Customers to sell or cross-sell the products. Maintain relevant sales data such as documents, communication records, etc. Identify the process flow starting from Lead up to the deal gets closed.

3- A business that creates Quotations & Invoices: 

Built-in invoicing module to track the quotations and invoices generated against an opportunity. Efficiency to merge the billing details into the document which can further be mailed to the customer right from the CRM software without any need to switch between the applications.

4 – A business that deals in Customer Service: 

For any business that believes in increasing customer satisfaction by helping them in tracking as well as resolving the issues completely. Managing the cases within CRM as well as auto – escalations triggered on a timely basis not only guarantees better customer satisfaction but at the same helps the Management to track resource performance.

5- A business that wants to increase efficiency: 

Well-organized business results in better output which can be ultimately tracked with the help of various Reports, Dashboards, etc. Well-improved or say the advance level of features incorporating in CRM with the latest release of versions has enhanced the CRM which has ultimately proved beneficial for Business growth.

Thus using CRM software gives you numerous benefits to enrich both Business and Customer Relations by serving your customers better with stronger service and support. To know more about how can CRM software help you, you can check out our CRM software solution on https://www.tridentinfo.com/microsoft-dynamics-crm-software-solution/ and contact to our experts on https://www.tridentinfo.com/contact/.

Retail ERP Software
February 18, 20200

7 Reasons to have a Retail-oriented Solution to Unite E-commerce and ERP

Solely brick-and-mortar retail is gradually have become the exception rather than the norm. Increasing numbers of consumers have welcomed the convenience of online retailers, allowing them to evaluate items in less time and make purchasing decisions rather than visiting various physical stores. In everyday market research, 81 percent of consumers use phones and tablets. In reply to these developments, businesses try to boost revenues by embracing ecommerce and spreading to other platforms.

Yet each new site introduced by marketers raises the difficulty of their distribution chain. To integrate all channels information to make good enterprise-wide choices, they need new digital resources. To establish a consolidated database of all purchases, clients, and goods, several retail businesses prefer to incorporate their ERP implementation services with each of their distribution channels. There are however some clear benefits of using an integrated solution designed specifically for the retail sector over integration solutions for common use applications.

Below are some features of built-in retail integration solutions that show the requirement of customization for a common integration framework:

1- Flexibility Over Retail Vhannels

All businesses move toward cohesive user experiences. Retail-specific integration solutions enable different systems, like your point-of-sale (POS) and ecommerce system, to import and then use product descriptions into your Retail ERP Software. It means you have the same range of products throughout all the product lines, while constantly pricing and discounting those items.

2- Omni Channel Experience

Retail integration solutions offer services for Omni channel purchase-online pickup-in-store (BOPIS) fulfilment which enables customers to buy an item from one channel and deliver it from another platform. They might buy a product at a retail outlet, for instance, and have it shipped to their house, or they might order it online and pick it up at a local retail outlet. The retail-specific integrated system manages ZIP-code searches for shop inventory, and shares shop pickup information between systems.

3 – Inventory Clarity

Retail connectivity solutions provide an accurate representation of product availability by synchronization of inventory data throughout networks and systems on a routine basis. Entities can even merge individual warehouses and shops into satisfactory groups to enhance the control of the distribution chain.

4- Client Information Integration

Your Retail ERP system will exchange customer data with your online store and other channels, using a retail-specific implementation solution. Customer data must stay consistent over digital and physical platforms and will avoid redundant information. Such knowledge could be used to generate and monitor purchase requests, and to improve loyalty program management.

5- Unified Loyalty Program

A retail integration solution makes it much easier to operate a single loyalty program with consumer, pricing, and discount information integrated into your Retail ERP system. You will receive and redeem coupons, gift cards, and loyalty points across all platforms, creating better customer satisfaction and higher participation levels than a channel-specific rewards program.

6 – Single Integration Solution for Payment

A retail-specific integration approach increases time to value by offering preloaded integration with major payment service vendors. The use of one integrated system for processing payments, order processing, customer data, and product inventory offers greater efficiency and lower production costs than multi-integrator dependence.

7 – Managing Multiple Languages and Currencies

Retail integration technologies are planned for retail operations around the world. They have help for managing multiple languages and currencies, so you can quickly set up physical or online stores in new geographical regions.

Conclusion

Integration solutions intended for the retail sector provide many out of the box that would involve many months of costly customization to accomplish using platforms for general purpose integration. Trident Information Pvt Ltd provides a flexible and versatile integration solution which many international retailers use. For more information on the power of retail-specific integration, contact Microsoft ERP Partner Trident Information Pvt Ltd on https:/www.tridentinfo.com/contact/