Dynamics 365 Finance is a powerful ERP solution from Microsoft suitable for medium to large enterprises across various industries. It can help organizations streamline operational efficiency, financial management, and decision-making processes, ultimately driving growth and profitability.
Quisitive is very excited about the release of Dynamics 365 Finance Wave 1 and the value it brings to our customers. All release notes can be found on the Microsoft site here, but below are our top five new features included in the latest 10.0.37 release:
Questions about this release? Get in touch.
Are you looking to make the move to Dynamics 365 Finance? Book a cloud ERP migration assessment.
Are you still using Dynamics AX? Explore the differences AX vs. Dynamics 365 Finance.
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Client: Arthur Health
Industry: Healthcare Provider
Products and Services: Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, Quisitive MazikCare
Country: Canada
For full customer story visit the Microsoft website here.
Arthur Health, a healthcare solutions company based in Canada, is reimagining traditionally compartmentalized models of care through a clinically integrated network approach. In 2019, Arthur Health teamed up with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and University Health Network to scale a rapid-access clinic model of care for low-back pain. In a pilot, this led to sustained reduced wait times, better access to local care, and higher patient and provider satisfaction, so Arthur Health plans to expand it. Arthur Health used Microsoft partner Quisitive’s MazikCare platform and Microsoft technologies to develop a patient-centered solution that the company hopes will spark changes to primary and specialty care in Canada.
Ontario is a large province, and Arthur Health knew that empowering patients in rural, northern, and remote communities to receive the right care closer to home would require a robust digital healthcare solution. To create an integrated, cloud-based healthcare network that houses and shares information, Arthur Health needed technology that was user-friendly, flexible, and scalable. “We needed to choose a solution that was extensible, agile, and provides the highest level of security for handling patient information, so that was the attraction to Microsoft,” says Dr. Christian Veillette, Chief Technology Officer of Arthur Health.
As Arthur Health began exploring solutions to evolve a clinically integrated network, it was introduced to Microsoft partner Quisitive, a company with extensive experience in both Microsoft cloud solutions and the healthcare industry. “We approached Microsoft with our vision, and it directed us to Quisitive,” says Dr. Nizar Mahomed, CEO of Arthur Health. “The company’s depth of understanding of the Microsoft universe and of healthcare complexities would allow us to achieve our vision of an evolving model of care and care delivery, and its MazikCare platform allowed us to innovate faster.”
The Arthur Health team moved quickly to enhance its digital health platform. It drew on Quisitive’s experience to develop a care-coordination platform based on Microsoft Power Platform and Quisitive’s MazikCare in only nine months. The team configured standardized complex-care assessments for providers in the network as well as customized workflows. Communication among medical providers all over Ontario is a central piece of the new system, and Arthur Health created this critical element using the communication and automation capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365. “At the end of the day, you need a process to integrate care because the providers are geographically dispersed,” says Dr. Rampersaud.
Arthur Health then began work on the final puzzle piece: an e-referral service that would allow medical providers to quickly send patient referrals and information. It typically takes about one year to develop and deploy an e-referral service in the Canadian healthcare system, but Arthur Health activated its service in only three months, in part through using the security frameworks in Microsoft solutions, fast healthcare interoperability resources, and MazikCare DataFusion.
The rapid-access clinic model of care was adapted from the successful pilot that ran for five years in metropolitan, urban, and rural and northern healthcare settings. Using an interprofessional shared care model for LBP management that linked primary to tertiary care, the pilot demonstrated immediate improvement in access to care. The average wait time for participants to have a specialized LBP assessment and individualized management plan plummeted from between six and 12 months to two to four weeks—a decrease often of around 80 percent. Many people who would previously have waited in pain and with reduced mobility to see a specialist instead found care closer to home with a physiotherapist or chiropractor supported by a regional centralized specialist. Patients gained unparalleled access to specialized care and payers realized immediate cost savings from a reduction in unnecessary tests such as MRI scans.
The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) approved expanding the pilot to serve the provincial population of more than 10 million adults. Arthur Health’s partnership with MOHLTC and University Health Network helped create meaningful change for patients and providers through the company’s growing clinically integrated network digital platform. “At scale, satisfaction rates for both patients and physicians have remained greater than 90 percent, according to our surveys,” says Dr. Rampersaud. “The provincial program has happier patients and happier providers, and it has significantly reduced unnecessary MRIs, emergency visits, and specialist referrals to deliver a return on the investment from the Ontario Ministry of Health.”
Arthur Health is excited by the potential for further growth and is eager to expand its clinically integrated network platform beyond specialty care. More than 8,000 primary care providers are using this program to refer patients throughout Ontario, demonstrating that patient-centered care delivers better outcomes closer to home. Dr. Veillette sees the next step as incorporating more features of Dynamics 365 to help providers communicate seamlessly and close the circle of care around individual patients. The physicians at Arthur Health are also excited to explore using predictive models as Microsoft further develops its AI capabilities.
“The next step will be predictive health management through analysis,” says Dr. Mahomed. “With the capabilities that Microsoft is building out, five years from now this program will be much smarter and more efficient.”
Many AX users are asking the same question. Is now the time to make the move from Dynamics AX to Dynamics 365 F&O?
Yes. The answer is yes. Not just because the risks and benefits outlined below, but also because at some point, Microsoft will stop AX support entirely.
Saying goodbye can sometimes be tough, but in this case, it isn’t hard to see why now is the time to move on from Dynamics AX.
Microsoft has ended mainstream support for Dynamics AX 2012, meaning users no longer receive security updates, bug fixes, or new features. This can leave a business vulnerable to security breaches and other issues. At some point, Microsoft will end all support for AX, so moving isn’t a question of “if” but “how smoothly”.
As businesses grow and expand, their ERP system needs to scale accordingly. Dynamics AX 2012 has limitations in terms of scalability, which can make it difficult for companies to manage their operations efficiently.
Dynamics AX 2012 has limited visibility and access, making it difficult for businesses to make informed decisions in real time.
With more businesses adopting cloud-based ERP solutions, companies using on-premises solutions like Dynamics AX 2012 may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage, unable to operate with the agility possible using a cloud-based system.
The ROI of moving from Dynamics AX to Dynamics 365 Finance can vary depending on business size, complexity, and the desired functionality. Nevertheless, businesses that have migrated to Dynamics 365 F&O have seen numerous benefits and cost savings.
Dynamics 365 F&O provides more streamlined processes for managing business operations, including financials, supply chain, and manufacturing. This, in turn, can lead to reduced manual labor, improved productivity for employees, and faster and better decision-making.
By giving organizations access to real-time analytics and insights, Dynamics 365 F&O helps leaders more quickly identify areas that need improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize their operations and increase profitability.
As a cloud-based solution, Dynamics 365 Finance does not require expensive hardware maintenance or software upgrades. Microsoft regularly updates Dynamics 365 F&O with new features, automatically applying updates to the software and reducing the need for costly customizations and integrations.
Quisitive’s Dynamics AX to Dynamics 365 F&O Migration Assessment offers a structured and easy process for expertly planning your migration from AX to Dynamics 365 Finance. As part of this assessment, Dynamics technical and business resources will work to:
After the assessment is complete, the work can start, and you can look forward to a modern, accessible & fully secure cloud ERP to help grow your business.
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These comprehensive platforms offer a wide range of features and capabilities to streamline your financial operations and drive business growth.
To assist you in understanding the key distinctions between Dynamics AX and Dynamics 365 Finance, we have created an informative infographic, that highlights the unique features and benefits of each solution, allowing you to make an informed decision that aligns with your organization’s ERP needs.
Download the infographic to learn more about Dynamics AX and Dynamics 365 Finance.
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In our Crawl, Walk, Run: Digital Transformation in Healthcare Series, our team of experts cover how you can ramp up your digital transformation journey with MazikCare to optimize supply chains, enhance provider and patient experiences, improve revenue cycles, and gain real-time insights.
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When an organization undergoes a merger, acquisition or divestiture, there are many technological elements that need to be considered to ensure everyone involved can work together — or separately — effectively without sacrificing necessary systems or tooling.
Oftentimes, this means more than migrating mailboxes. The organization must consider other M&A integration elements such as its Azure tenant, data platforms, applications, security, ERP systems, and more.
Read this ebook and discover the Critical Components of a Successful Merger and the technology integration “Must Dos”.
Quisitive is a premier, global Microsoft Partner that harnesses the Microsoft cloud platform and complementary technologies, including custom solutions and first-party offerings, to generate transformational impact for enterprise customers. Quisitive has consistently been recognized as a leading Microsoft Partner with 16 Specializations and all 6 Solution Partner Designations. Quisitive’s Microsoft awards include the 2023 US Partner of the Year Winner for Health and Life Sciences, 2023 US Partner of the Year Winner for Solutions Assessment and 2023 US Partner of the Year Finalist for the Industrial and Manufacturing vertical.
A recent survey conducted by Sage found that 93% of financial leaders are under pressure to accelerate month-end close. Finance teams everywhere are feeling the pressures to “close faster” and are looking for ways to shorten the average month-end close cycle from the average of 10-12 days.
Monthly close is an important task performed by the finance team where financial information is collected and made available to be analyzed by leaders and other stakeholders. The result of the data collected may produce cash flow statements, fixed assets and inventory levels, Income and Expense Reports, Balance Sheets, and a variety of other reports which help provide visibility into the financial health of the company and are used for important decision making.
An accurate and streamlined month-end closing process leads to fewer errors, better allocation of resources, and most importantly, information being routed to leaders for planning.
So how can finance and accounting teams “close faster” and better?
Month-end close is often dreaded by many accounting and finance professionals. Collecting the information needed to “close the books” every month is a data-intensive task.
This is compounded by the fact that not all information needed can come directly from the accounting team and must be collected by multiple business units and systems. Financial data comes from several disparate data sources. Finance managers must often create multiple spreadsheets to manage labor-intensive data cleansing, which slows down the process and increases the risk of outdated information and errors.
Most accounting teams not using an enterprise ERP are likely managing things like Fixed Assets, bank account reconciliations, deferred revenues, inventory, and pre-paid expenses outside of the accounting system (off-ledger). This means a lot of duplicate data entry, files, and manual lookup is needed to close the books and produce accurate reports.
Outdated or inaccurate information and reports directly affect your leader’s ability to make effective business decisions, making it very risky to rely on disparate data sources.
Having a checklist is a good place to start as it streamlines the workload and ensures governance in information collection. Remember that a checklist is simply a tool to provide guidance and may need to be continually revised and updated to reflect changes to the business.
Your month-end checklist should include instructions for things like:
Efficiencies in this process matter as every hour saved means teams are more likely to meet or exceed the month-end closing deadline. Leadership depends on timely monthly reports and must be made aware if there are delays expected in the closing or reporting process.
Communicate early and often with your team and leadership and make sure timelines are on track, or any delays are known.
Also, ensure everyone outside the finance team is aware of the timeline and expectations on their part. Building a relationship with other teams within your organization and providing clear goals and objectives required to complete the month-end process is part of the finance team’s responsibility. Often, finance leaders will host monthly or quarterly pre-close meetings to review the objectives and ensure timelines can be met.
This eBook offers more insights on how to manage your month-end process.
With month-end close deadlines shortening, and teams stretched, the days of spreadsheet-based month-end close are numbered. Modern accounting teams leverage technology and automation to eliminate manual accounting tasks and deliver timely data and reports throughout the entire accounting cycle.
Today’s financial management solutions, like Sage Intacct and Microsoft Dynamics, provide many opportunities to streamline accounting tasks, data collection, month-end close and reporting.
By leveraging a complete cloud-ERP solution with integration and automation, manual work is eliminated and key accounting data points are kept up-to-date and available for reporting.
Leveraging technology to collect, sort, and calculate data reduces the risk of human error and facilitates the month-end closing. For example, technology improves how payables are posted and tracked all month long. When invoices are captured electronically, they are automatically coded, routed and approved, eliminating the need to collect that data at month-end. Another key way technology augments the month-end close process is through online data collection and reporting. When data from multiple systems and teams is fed into a central location, it is much easier to get one version of truth to use for decision-making.
There is no limit to the efficiencies that can be created with technology. Imagine being able to auto-post pre-paid expenses and recognize revenues automatically based on specific parameters and profiles. Technology allows you to automate the bank reconciliation process by importing bank statements directly into your ERP and can cut approvals in half with routing. Modern ERP solutions even offer real-time dashboards so leaders aren’t knocking on your door at month-end. If you are relying on a manual process for month-end close, or the technology you rely on is not robust enough to handle end-to-end financial management, it is worth investing in the right solution to facilitate accounting processes. Most organizations should expect to see considerable returns on the investment through time savings, a reduction in accounting and data errors, and improved insight.
Quisitive is your trusted partner for complete digital transformation, including helping you leverage proven and scalable cloud accounting and ERP solutions to streamline key accounting processes and use your data for decision-making.
Book your free ERP assessment with us and we’ll assess your needs and recommend the best solution and path for success.
972.573.0995 | [email protected]
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Client: Thermon Inc.
Industry: Manufacturing
Products and Services: Microsoft Dynamics 365, Dynamics Sales & Marketing
Country: USA
Thermon Inc. is a leading global provider of reliable and safe innovative thermal solutions since the 1950s. The organization specializes in providing complete flow assurance, process heating, temperature maintenance, freeze protection, and environmental monitoring. They offer modern solutions for industrial heating applications that serve the global energy, power generation, and chemical markets. The company operates in 25 countries with headquarters in Austin, Texas.
Quisitive previously worked with Thermon to implement an intranet solution to improve employee communication and collaboration. From project creation to completion, Thermon enjoyed the customer experience and built a strong relationship with the Quisitive team so when they needed help with their Dynamics 365 Sales environment, they didn’t hesitate to reach out. After the implementation of Dynamics 365 Sales, Thermon decided that they needed a partner, a Dynamics expert, to help them optimize and improve their customer engagement through sales and marketing channels. Quisitive was selected to help.
Thermon’s Sales and Marketing teams identified priority areas that needed improvement to ensure data integrity, enhance the user experience, and deliver a consistent performance to ultimately enhance customer engagement. The company wanted to avoid inaccurate pictures of the customer life cycle and needed policies that could help them accomplish that.
Another goal was to integrate the CRM, ERP sales quotation function, and the email system to support the business’s requirements to develop an enterprise-wide view of the customer’s journey. Furthermore, the team needed to cut down on manual and time-consuming activities to save time and money, as well as reduce technical debt to take advantage of new Microsoft functionality as it is released.
Thermon needed help reimagining its Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing environment to address their business priorities. Quisitive helped Thermon with a multi-phase approach that started with an innovation workshop to discover “the art of the possible” and identify near-term transformative activities. The purpose of this workshop was to collect feedback on what was working and learn more about their pain points. A prioritized roadmap for improvements was created after the workshop, which included the following components:
After the workshop, Thermon opted for Quisitive’s Dynamics Program, a subscription service that monitors and delivers strategic recommendations on a consistent basis. Thermon was paired with a dedicated Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing coach and an entire team of experts to work with their team and ensure that their line-of-business solutions drive the most value for their organization. Key optimizations in the Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing program included:
Furthermore, Quisitive supported the company’s organizational goals by partnering with their marketing team and leveraging platforms such as Dynamics 365 Sales, Scribe, and Power Automate to generate business opportunities and create a path from leads to closing a deal. This was accomplished by modernizing the solution, giving all stakeholders the needed visibility in the sales journey, and encouraging the use of the tools.
Quisitive’s Dynamics Program offers Thermon strategic guidance to continuously optimize their Dynamics Sales and Marketing environment to improve customer engagement, employee experience, and drive continuous value for the organization. Quisitive enabled the organization to benefit from a real-time picture of the account status across the enterprise through improved system integration, better-automated workflows, an improved CRM user experience, and better overall system reliability.
Thermon’s Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing capabilities will continue to adjust with the business’s needs and goals as they change, and Quisitive will continue helping them achieve their long-term goals. The Dynamics Program delivers a set of prescribed monthly activities and advisory meetings to keep companies’ systems environment healthy and secure. The next step in Thermon’s journey is to optimize the use of Dynamics 365 Marketing, a toolset intended to build meaningful relationships with customers and prospects with customer-led experiences.
