How Allied Global Marketing Reclaimed 2,000 Hours Per Year Through Dynamics 365 Business Central
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About the Client
Allied Global Marketing is a prestigious marketing agency renowned for its work with high-profile clientele, including top-tier athletes and well-known, global advertising brands.
Challenges
Integration Complexities
Allied Global Marketing was facing exponential growth and starting to outgrow their legacy ERP system, Great Plains. This growth introduced the need for a robust financial solution capable of handling large amounts of data and transforming that data into actionable reports in a timely manner. Additionally, they needed a solution that could effortlessly integrate with Projector, a vital third-party marketing production tool. Projector handles the invoicing and cost collection process, generating thousands of vendor invoices. These invoices needed to seamlessly flow into their new finance and accounting solution to enhance the process while reducing manual intervention and potential errors.Global User Experience
With a team dispersed across discrete geographic locations, five countries across three continents, maintaining a consistent and simple user experience was necessary. The company sought a cloud-based, real-time system that could unify their financial operations, fostering collaboration across team members and ensuring the accuracy of consolidated financial data.Scaling to High Volume
Allied Global Marketing was managing tens of thousands of customers and vendors, creating an intricate web of financial data to oversee. The company urgently required a financial system that could efficiently manage the high volume of transactions, in addition to improving the complexity introduced by disparate systems of Great Plains and Excel spreadsheets.
Solution
Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) emerged as the clear solution for Allied Global Marketing. The cloud- based, real-time, and integrated capabilities of Business Central created a unified user experience, enabling teams to collaborate on a single platform. BC’s efficiency and scalability were crucial in addressing the high volume of transactions the company managed, as well as provided more flexible reporting.
Outcomes
Efficient Integration
Business Central’s integration with Projector streamlined the creation of thousands of vendor invoices, significantly accelerating the vendor invoice processing time. Dynamics 365 BC also integrated seamlessly with other tools they were currently using that performed advanced banking processes.Time and Cost Savings
Dynamics 365 Business Central consolidates data and reporting automatically, rather than manually, saving 10 users 2-3 hours each, Without Business Central, Allied Global would have had to hire 4-5 more full-time employees to keep up with all of their administrative and billing tasks. Business Central also paved the way for other efficient process improvements such as billing cycle renewals, and year-end closing.Improved User Experience
The cloud-based and real-time nature of BC provided a consistent and user-friendly experience for teams across different locations. As a result, Allied Global’s billing team could now effectively handle the 19,000 projects simultaneously. Additionally, web-based security features were also implemented to make the login and verification experience quick and seamless for users.Foreign Exchange Capabilities
Dynamics 365 Business Central’s built-in foreign exchange capabilities allowed Allied Global Marketing to manage currency conversions and financial transactions across international borders seamlessly, simplifying their international financial operations.
Business Central has completely changed the game for reporting. We are gaining more reporting insights than ever before, and all with a couple of clicks. This is saving my team hours of manual entry each week, and I'm sure our other teams and entities will see the same value.
Jenna Miller, VP Controller