Business Central Finance Module: A Great Tool For Companies Eager For Economic Impact

The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

A Brief Summary of the Forrester Report

With a walkthrough of the Forrester Report, we can get invaluable insights into the impact that Cloud-based D365 Business Central Finance has on the total ROI and Net Present Value of various companies still using on-premises ERP systems.

With their research of five example companies, Forrester was able to conclusively decipher several select improvements that Business Central brought to each company. Some of these risk-adjusted present value (PV) key findings included:

• A growth trajectory that reduced the need to hire additional staff by an average of 10%.
• Improved flow of operations by an average of 8% thanks to the better tools of D365 Business Central.
• Expenditure of less than $44K over a 3 year period on external third-party reporting because of the granular visibility of Microsoft PowerBI.
• Saving $40k by avoiding the costs of licence fees, support personnel savings, and infrastructure reductions that come with on-premises solutions.

This doesn’t even cover the added perks of confidence in real-time visibility, expansion into global markets, ability to integrate with other Microsoft products such as SharePoint, and improved EX. All of these features brought forth by MS Business Central, with the added application support of professional services, undoubtedly had a positive effect for these companies. In Forrester's word:

“Before migrating to Business Central, the interviewees’ organisations managed their operations with a disparate collection of on-premises Microsoft and non-Microsoft ERP tools that lacked key functionality as organisations looked to scale and modernise their businesses. By migrating to Dynamics 365 Business Central, organisations gave their finance and operations users the improved functionality, visibility, and access required of a modernised digital business aiming for growth.”

- Forrester Report, 2020.

The Total Economic Impact of Dynamics Business Central

Dynamics 365 BC uses Azure to offer a system without silos, and Forrester has managed to gauge the measurable impact Business Central has had on several SMEs.

In many ways, Business Central acts as the perfect catalyst for SMEs seeking to start an internal movement over how to handle finance and produce actual economic impact. In the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Customer Journey, Forrester found that all their interviewees, including specialty manufacturers, enjoyed a positive financial ripple thanks to Business Central. After dealing with difficulties scaling with an on-premises ERP tool, customisations, and the manual process, interviewees found solace in Business Centrals solutions of:

• Enhancements and automation of key finance and operations processes.
• Improved ERP software access across devices.
• Cross-level visibility.
• Reduction of the overall cost of ERP tools and infrastructure.
• A level of scalability not possible on on-premises solutions.
• 40% year-over-year growth, but only a need to hire 20% more accounting and operations personnel to manage the new business.
• “Salespeople spending less time in manual invoicing and more time selling.”
• Accountants within finance reclaim about 2 hours each week attributable to Business Central’s interactivity with Excel.

These are just a few examples of MS Business Central’s impact on the five companies Forrester interviewed over a 3-year process. CEOs of the companies describe how the Cloud-based computing of Business Central enabled them “to dream to be a big company [with] tools that allow [them] to do things too cost-prohibitive for a smaller organisation like [theirs].”

In many ways, Dynamics 365 Business Central became the “Hello World” program for these SMEs which opened up the gate to allow them to operate at the standards usually reserved for much larger organisations. There is no doubt the switch has the potential to do the same for you, too.