CASE STUDY
Sirs Navigation Ltd
Migration from Sage 50 Accounts and Manufacturing to Dynamics 365 Business Central
Who are Sirs Navigation Ltd
SIRS Navigation is the global leader for the design, manufacture, and calibration of high quality magnetic standby compasses, supplying to all sectors of the aviation industry. Products are selected by the majority of aircraft manufacturers including Airbus and Boeing, for reasons of High Quality, Reliability and Excellent visual appearance.
The challenge
Sirs Navigation having used Sage 50c Accounts and Sage 50 Manufacturing for many years, needed to migrate to an alternative solution for three key reasons:
Legacy Software
Sage 50 Manufacturing had been discontinued by Sage UK thus would receive no further development and moreover was only compatible with older versions of Sage 50c Accounts
The move to Cloud computing
The overarching strategy of the business owners for the the SIRS infrastructure was to move towards a wholly cloud based environment, with the use of Microsoft 365 SaaS and the deployment of SharePoint and Teams. Sage 50c and logical replacements for an interfacing MRP have no roadmap to become browser based and thus would be reliant on a server of some kind.
Improved Functionality
The sensitive and complex nature of the Sirs Navigation business across products, supply chain, service and quality control require detailed traceability and reporting. These activities were largely completed outside of Sage 50c and Sage 50 Manufacturing and thus were time consuming.
The solutionMigration from Sage 50 Accounts and Manufacturing to Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium, for complex manufacturing.
Process
Following demonstrations of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Qi, it was identified by the SIRS business owners that this Microsoft ERP would be a great fit for their requirements now and for the future.
Qi provisioned a 30-day trial environment to enable Sirs to gain the reassurance that the move to Business Central was the right one. During this period, Qi offered telephone, email, and remote support to ensure the time spent on exploring the software during the trial period was as effective and as valuable as possible for the Commercial Director, who was also the active internal project manager.
Onsite and remote training, including tailored workshops was delivered by Qi, working with the Sirs Navigation wider team. Qi would not suggest Sirs went live on the system unless all parties were confident required processing on the system could be completed.
Sirs Navigation existing print layouts requirements were reviewed together with Qi and compared to the enhanced print layouts Qi provide as standard as part of their projects. This ensured that any changes, specific to their needs, were completed prior to going live.
Qi migrated Sage 50c Accounts Professional and Sage 50 Manufacturing data with full history to Business Central using their custom MigrateNow! toolkit, a process which includes a trial migration, data migration validation and a final data migration immediately prior to Go Live. This process was completed over a weekend resulting in Sirs starting business on Monday, processing on Business Central.
The outcome
Efficient processing and considerable time savings.
Maise Bylett – Commercial Director at Sirs Navigation Ltd commented:
Every day we are seeing considerable time savings with Business Central. As it’s a single database, all the information we need is easily accessed from one place and we can drill into information easily.
The reporting is far superior to that of Sage 50c and Sage 50 Manufacturing and that is important for us.
Business Central also has a much more intuitive interface, and it’s modern! We can search for the information we need easily using the search box and the built-in help pages are really useful.
We process a large amount of data analysis in Excel and as Business Central is a Microsoft product it is efficient at pushing data into Excel, which we can then analyse and publish straight back to Business Central.
We have worked with Qi for many years and had looked at Business Central several times prior to committing to it. We always felt the product was a good fit and that Qi were the right partner – it just came down to getting the timing right for Sirs. The move to Business Central was part of our wider business strategy to move away from onsite servers and use browser-based technology. Honestly, I expected the project to be successful because we know Qi so well! They didn’t disappoint!