Faster Quoting with Business Central
ATL Agricultural Technology Ltd develops and manufactures smart electronic milking parlour solutions for cows, goats and sheep.
The business had outgrown Sage 50 Accounts and Sage Manufacturing, with reporting issues, slow quoting, multi-currency requirements, and limited serial-number traceability.
Qi migrated ATL to Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium and Microsoft 365, moving its Sage data into a more connected ERP environment. The result was stronger CRM visibility, improved production traceability, better forecasting and a quote creation process that became faster, more accurate and easier to manage.
The Challenge
ATL had invested in Sage Manufacturing in 2005 to work alongside their Sage 50 Accounts Professional but by 2021 were frustrated by the lack of technical updates for Manufacturing (which has subsequently been discontinued). ATL were experiencing issues getting the right information out of their Sage systems for reporting purposes, quickly and reliably.
The business required a system that would support staged payments from customers across multiple currencies, and the production team required improved serial number recording and traceability. With sales offices based in different countries requiring their own price lists for quoting purposes, it was becoming increasingly hard and time consuming to get quotes out and capture information regarding the overall sales pipeline.
The impact of Brexit had made it crucial that materials requirements could be forward planned and ordered. It was time to move to enterprise resource planning.
The Solution
Migration from Sage 50 Accounts, Sage 50 Manufacturing + Libre Office to Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium + Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365: The first step was to migrate ATL from its current email and web document solutions to Microsoft 365 licensing. This supported the email logging function within Business Central’s CRM area, and provided full access to Office 365 applications, Teams and SharePoint.
Business Central Project: All ATL’s Sage 50 Accounts and Manufacturing data was successfully migrated into Business Central. Training was delivered with a mix of remote and onsite services, backed up with video recordings and workshops to ensure ATL’s staff were confident in their new system prior to the final data migration.
ATL’s newly recruited Sales Manager set to work ensuring that the CRM function within Business Central would be used to support efficient quoting practices and capturing of opportunities to build a meaningful pipeline for forecasting purposes.
The Outcome
Multiple Price Lists within Business Central halves the time to raise quotes!
The multiple price list function enables ATL to specify price lists for different markets with appropriate discounts and ancillary charges built in. The quote creation process is faster and reliably accurate. Quotes can now be raised accurately and easily and the time between quote request and customer quote receipt has reduced dramatically.