Case study · Wholesale & distribution
One stock figure every branch agrees on
A distributor with three or four warehouses usually runs stock in one system, purchasing in spreadsheets and finance in an accounting package that sees none of it. This is how we brought the three together in Dynamics 365 Business Central, branch by branch, without stopping the business.
Project overview
A phased Business Central rollout for a multi-site distributor.
- Industry
- Wholesale & distribution
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- ERP implementation and migration
- Platform
- Dynamics 365 Business Central
- Timeline
- 16–24 weeks
- Team
- 4–5 people
- Rollout
- One site first, then the rest
- Integrations
- eCommerce, EDI, shipping carriers
- Deployment
- Business Central online
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve in the first year
These are the targets the rollout was planned against. Where a business lands depends mostly on how clean its item and customer data is at the start.
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30–50%
Faster month-end close
Stock, purchasing and sales post straight into the ledger, so month-end stops being a reconciliation exercise between three systems.
Target range; depends on how many manual journals remain after go-live
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15–25%
Less excess stock held
Reorder points and lead times per item and per site replace gut-feel purchasing, so each branch stops over-ordering to be safe.
Target range after two to three purchasing cycles on the new data
-
60–80%
Fewer manual order entries
Web and EDI orders arrive as sales orders instead of being re-typed from email.
Depends on the share of orders that come through integrated channels
Business challenges
How the distributor ran before
Nothing here is unusual. It is what happens when a business adds sites faster than it replaces its systems.
Stock
Each warehouse keeps its own count. Transfers between sites are emailed, and the head office figure is a day or two behind.
Purchasing
Buyers reorder from spreadsheets exported every Monday, so fast movers run out mid-week and slow movers pile up.
Sales
Orders from the website and large customers are re-typed into the stock system by hand.
Reporting
Branch managers get a weekly spreadsheet, so a stock or margin problem surfaces a week after it started.
Finance
The accounting package receives totals, not transactions. Month-end means matching three reports line by line.
Proposed solution
What the Business Central build covers
Mostly standard Business Central, configured properly. Custom extensions only where the distributor genuinely works differently from the standard.
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Multi-location inventory
Every site as a location with its own bins, stock and reorder policy. Transfer orders replace emailed stock moves, with goods in transit visible to everyone.
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Purchasing and replenishment
Requisition worksheets suggest what to buy per site from sales history, lead times and minimum order quantities. Buyers approve instead of calculating.
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Sales order processing
Price lists and discounts per customer group, credit limits checked at order entry, and shipments that update stock and invoice in one step.
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Finance on the same data
General ledger, payables and receivables posting from real transactions, with dimensions for site and product line so profit can be read per branch.
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Integrations
Web shop orders and EDI orders flow into Business Central as sales orders; carrier labels and tracking come back on the shipment.
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Reporting
Stock value, margin and days of cover per site in Business Central and Power BI, from the same numbers finance closes on.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was not "we want an ERP". It was "we don't trust our stock figure" and "month-end takes two weeks". Business Central answers both, but only if the item, customer and supplier data going into it is clean, so data work started in week one rather than the week before go-live.
We roll out one site first. It proves the setup on real orders while the other sites carry on as before, and it gives the team a working system to learn on before everyone depends on it.
What the project had to deliver
- 01One live stock figure per item, per site
- 02Purchasing suggestions buyers can approve, not calculate
- 03Web and EDI orders without re-typing
- 04Month-end in days, not weeks
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
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Item data with duplicates, missing units of measure and inconsistent names
What we did
Item data was cleaned and deduplicated in the first weeks, with the client's team deciding what to keep, before anything was configured on top of it.
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Customer-specific prices kept in people's heads or old spreadsheets
What we did
Customer prices were collected branch by branch, written into price lists and signed off by sales before go-live.
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Opening stock that has to be counted, not imported, at cut-over
What we did
Each site was counted at cut-over and the counted figures became the opening stock, rather than the old system's balances.
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Year-end timing: finance can't switch systems in the last month of a year
What we did
Go-live was planned around the financial calendar, with the pilot site switching at the start of a new period.
What we watched for
- Clean the item master before building anything on it
- Count stock at cut-over rather than trust the old system
- Keep extensions small; standard features upgrade for free
- Give buyers a few weeks of parallel suggestions before switching off the spreadsheet
Development process
A phased rollout, one site first
The phases the rollout ran in. Dates move with data quality more than with development.
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Discovery and fit-gap
Two to three weeks mapping how orders, stock and money move today, and deciding what standard Business Central covers and what needs an extension.
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Data preparation
Cleaning and deduplicating items, customers, suppliers and price lists, with the client's team deciding what to keep. This runs alongside configuration, not after it.
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Configuration and extensions
Locations, posting groups, approval flows and any extensions, built in a sandbox and demonstrated every two weeks on the client's own data.
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Pilot site go-live
Stock count, opening balances and cut-over for the first site, with our consultants on hand for the first month-end.
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Remaining sites and handover
The other sites follow in waves, each faster than the last, then training for key users and a support arrangement.
Technology stack
Standard Microsoft tools, configured with care
Business Central online as the core, with Microsoft's own tools for integration and reporting wherever they do the job.
ERP
- Dynamics 365 Business Central
- AL extensions
- Sandbox environments
Integration
- Business Central APIs
- Power Automate
- EDI connector
- Carrier APIs
Reporting
- Power BI
- Business Central reports
- Excel add-in
Delivery
- Azure DevOps
- Automated tests
- Configuration packages
Quality assurance & deployment
Proved on the client's own data before go-live
An ERP is trusted when the numbers agree. Configuration and extensions were tested in a sandbox on the client's own data, and finance signed off the figures before cut-over.
- Sandbox testing of every process on the client's own data
- User acceptance testing with key users, by scenario
- Migration rehearsals, reconciled to the old system
- Automated tests for extensions, run before each release
- Permission sets checked role by role
Deployment
- 01Pilot site go-liveStock count, opening balances and cut-over for the first site, with our consultants on hand for the first month-end.
- 02Remaining sites and handoverThe other sites follow in waves, each faster than the last, then training for key users and a support arrangement.
- 03Cut-over planA rehearsed cut-over with a checklist, opening balances signed off by finance, and a rollback point.
- 04Hypercare and warrantyConsultants on hand through the first month-end, and six months of free bug fixing.
Final deliverables
One system the whole business works from
At the end of the rollout every site sells, buys and moves stock in the same system that finance closes the books in. The stock figure on screen is the stock on the shelf, give or take the day's picking.
Just as important, the client's own team runs it. Key users can add items, change price lists and adjust reorder policies without calling us, and they know which changes should go through testing first.
- Live stock per site, visible to sales and purchasing
- Purchasing driven by sales history and lead times
- Profit by branch and product line from the ledger
- A client team that can run the system day to day
Handed over to the client
- 01Configured Business CentralProduction and sandbox environments
- 02ExtensionsSource code and documentation
- 03Migrated dataReconciled and signed off
- 04Key-user trainingWith process guides
- 05Six-month warrantyFree bug fixing after delivery
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Faster month-end close | 30–50% | Target range; depends on how many manual journals remain after go-live |
| Less excess stock held | 15–25% | Target range after two to three purchasing cycles on the new data |
| Fewer manual order entries | 60–80% | Depends on the share of orders that come through integrated channels |
Verified reviews
What clients say about our Dynamics work
Verified reviews from our clients on the same kind of work, published on Clutch.
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