Can it handle our manufacturing?

Discrete, process and mixed-mode production are all supported, with bills of materials, formulas, routes, resources, capacity, scheduling, costing and subcontracting. Fit still depends on your production model rather than the label. Traceability, shop-floor execution and existing MES dependencies usually decide the design.

What about multiple countries and entities?

Multi-entity operation is one of the most common reasons organisations move to the enterprise platform, and it handles currencies, tax regimes, localisation and consolidation. The hard part is not the software. It is agreeing what must be identical across the group and who has the authority to refuse a local exception.

Can a struggling programme be recovered?

Usually, and more cheaply than starting again. Recovery begins by establishing what is actually true across scope, solution, data, integration, testing and governance, which is often the first honest picture anyone has had. Only then is it sensible to decide what to stabilise, change, complete or replan.

Can we do this in 90 days?

RAPID 90 is our qualification-based accelerated route, and it is not a promise to implement enterprise ERP in 90 days regardless of circumstances. It works where fit is strong, the first release can be bounded and the organisation can genuinely sustain the decision pace. Where it cannot, saying so early is more useful than agreeing to it.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management

Five companies.
Five versions of the truth.

Q: Business Central or Finance & Supply Chain?

They are not smaller and larger versions of the same ERP, and the honest answer is often Business Central. It provides a very capable connected core when your processes can stay reasonably standard and entity complexity is manageable. Finance & Supply Chain earns its extra cost and governance load when entities genuinely differ, warehouse execution is advanced, manufacturing is complex, or controls and integrations are heavy. We will tell you which we think it is.

Enterprise ERP is worth it when your entities, supply chain or manufacturing are genuinely complex, and expensive when they are not. Finance & Supply Chain connects finance, planning, warehouse and production across the group. We will tell you if Business Central would do the job for less.

Is enterprise ERP right for us?

Enterprise ERP should make complexity manageable, not reproduce it faithfully.

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Finance & Supply Chain

Overview

What are Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management?

Two connected Microsoft cloud applications for organisations that need deeper financial control and more complex operational capability.

Dynamics 365 Finance
Financial management
General ledger, AP, AR, cash, budgeting, fixed assets, reporting and performance planning.
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain
Operations
Procurement, inventory, planning, manufacturing, warehouse, transport, landed cost and assets.
Used together
Connected enterprise ERP
Finance sees the operational decisions behind the numbers, and operations sees the financial impact.
Enterprise operating model

The key question is not “which module do we need?” It is “where does complexity need to be controlled?”

Sound familiar?

Complexity arrives long before anyone calls it an ERP problem.

It usually shows up as reconciliation, workarounds and people quietly keeping their own version of the numbers.

Every entity does it differently
Five companies, five ways of working, and no version of the numbers everyone accepts.
Period-end runs on heroics
It closes because a handful of people work late, not because the process holds.
Promises are made on hope
Sales commit to dates that planning and the warehouse cannot actually support.
The cost of getting it wrong is hidden
Expedited freight, overtime and excess stock absorb the problem before anyone sees it.
Leadership reconciles instead of deciding
Board packs take a week to assemble and are still argued about in the room.

Where the detail lives

The areas worth examining before anyone talks about modules.

Open only the areas that matter to you. Each one describes the decision it supports rather than listing features.

Customer demand

Sales orders, forecasts, contracts and customer schedules
Seasonality, promotions, projects and historical patterns
What demand is real, and what demand is forecast?
What has changed since the plan was agreed?
Forecast accuracy is a business discipline. No system removes uncertainty from demand.

Procurement and suppliers

Requisitions, approvals, purchase agreements and vendor collaboration
Three-way matching and what happens when it fails
Who is allowed to commit spend, and at what value?
Cost control usually breaks at the approval step, not the purchase order.

Reporting and control

One agreed version of margin, cost and stock value
Segregation of duties and audit evidence
Which report is the one people trust in a disagreement?
Spreadsheets survive when reporting does not answer the real question.

Planning and supply

Master planning, coverage rules, lead times and safety stock
Who owns the planning parameters once the project ends?
What happens when a supplier confirms a date nobody can meet?
Planning output is only as honest as the lead times behind it.

Finance and close

General ledger, dimensions, subledger posting and intercompany
Costing method and how variances are explained
How long does the close take, and what is the manual part?
Multi-entity, multi-currency and statutory reporting requirements

Roles and access

Security roles designed around jobs, not around go-live convenience
Approval limits, delegation and who can change master data
Access review, so permissions do not drift after go-live
Most control failures start as a temporary access decision.

Inventory and warehouse

On-hand accuracy, locations, batch and serial control
Advanced warehouse work, or basic warehousing that people will actually follow
Where does stock go missing between the system and the shelf?
Counting discipline decides whether the numbers can be trusted.

Cash and working capital

Credit limits, collections, payment terms and disputes
Where cash is tied up in stock, work in progress or overdue invoices
Which decisions actually move working capital?
Cash forecasting depends on operational data being timely, not just accurate.

Benefits

Control complexity without disconnecting the business.

Connect decisions across finance and operations so the business can plan earlier, act faster and understand impact more clearly.

Connect financial and operational decisions
See how purchasing, inventory, production and fulfilment affect cost and cash.
Plan with better information
Bring demand, supply, capacity and financial planning closer together.
Improve operational visibility
Create a clearer view of inventory, warehouse, production and suppliers.
Strengthen financial control
Support structured finance across entities, budgets, reporting and reconciliation.
Reduce manual handovers
Cut rekeying, spreadsheets and offline reconciliation between teams.
Manage supply risk earlier
Spot supplier and planned-supply exposure before it becomes disruption.
Improve warehouse execution
Connect warehouse activity with manufacturing, transport and inventory.
Build on Microsoft
Extend reporting, automation and integration with the wider Microsoft platform.

Industries

The platform is standard. The way enterprises run it is not.

Choose an industry to see the process Finance & Supply Chain needs to support, what it is worth when it holds together, and what we bring to it.

Manufacturing example

1
Forecast
2
Plan
3
Source
4
Produce
5
Cost
6
Report

Master planning runs on bills of material and routings nobody fully trusts, so planners override the plan and true cost per unit only surfaces at month-end.

What it is worth

Master planning the business actually follows, across sites
Standard and actual cost visible per item, batch and route
Full traceability from component receipt to shipped order

With InteliSense as partner

We prove your planning parameters on real history before design
Production, costing and shop floor configured as one flow
An honest call on what standard covers and what needs an ISV

Go deeper

Manufacturing

The full picture for this sector: where projects usually stall, what we examine first and the decisions you will need to make.

See the manufacturing view

Why it matters

Operational decisions are financial decisions.

Margin and cash are not separate from what happens in the warehouse. They are the record of it.

Step 1
What you promise
A delivery date is only as good as the availability sitting behind it.
Step 2
What you do
Buying, making and moving either follow the plan or quietly drift from it.
Step 3
What it costs
Drift arrives as excess stock, expedited freight, overtime and rework.
Step 4
What lands
Margin, cash and service level are simply the record of the three above.

Built-in intelligence

Bring the exception forward.

The useful capability is not AI for its own sake. It is knowing which customer, plan or supplier change deserves attention, without somebody spending half a day assembling the evidence first.

Finance1 of 4

Know the customer position before you chase.

Copilot can summarise overdue invoices, payment history and remaining credit in the collections coordinator workspace, and prepare a reminder email for a person to review and send.

What this gives you

Why it matters. Less time assembling the account history before deciding what to do next.
How we help. We configure the process, check the underlying customer and collections data, and agree where a person still reviews and owns the communication.

Availability

Microsoft status: Generally available in Finance, with Copilot prerequisites.

Finance2 of 4

See payment risk before it becomes the problem.

Customer payment predictions use invoice, payment and customer history to flag open invoices that may be paid late or very late.

What this gives you

Why it matters. Collections teams can look at likely exceptions instead of waiting for every invoice to fall overdue.
How we help. We check whether the history is suitable, review prediction quality and agree how the signal should influence the real collections process.

Availability

Microsoft status: Generally available as part of Finance insights.

Supply Chain3 of 4

Ask why the demand plan moved.

Copilot can analyse demand plans for shifts, trends, anomalies and differences across the dimensions already in the plan, then explain what it found in plain language.

What this gives you

Why it matters. Planners spend less time working out what changed and more time deciding whether the plan needs action.
How we help. We make sure the planning dimensions, data and ownership are right before anybody treats the explanation as a decision.

Availability

Microsoft status: Generally available in the Demand planning application.

Supply Chain4 of 4

See what a supplier change affects downstream.

A supplier says an order will land three days late. Rather than tracing the dependencies by hand, Procurement Agent impact analysis can show whether that change touches stock, production or a customer commitment.

What this gives you

Why it matters. Purchasers can separate changes that are safe to accept from the ones that need investigation or escalation.
How we help. We qualify the procurement process, planning data, agent setup, permissions, approval boundaries and Copilot Studio consumption before it becomes part of the operating process.

Availability

Microsoft status: Production-ready preview, billed through Copilot Studio consumption.

Swipe, drag or use the arrow keys to move between decisions.

These are examples inside Finance and Supply Chain. Where the requirement crosses several systems, needs wider automation, agents or predictive models, that becomes a broader Data and AI decision. Explore Data and AI

Customer experience

Customers describing what we are like to work with.

The strongest evidence of how we work comes from the organisations we work with.

80%

of our business comes from existing customers and referrals.

All customer stories

The best I’ve ever experienced in over 20 years of collaboration.
Programme Manager, Hill & Smith Plc

Extensions (ISVs)Where Finance and Supply Chain stops short of how your operation actually runs, this is what we have already built.See what we have built

The platform decision

Business Central or Finance & Supply Chain?

Not small ERP and large ERP. Read down the column that describes your business rather than the one that flatters it, because the wrong choice is expensive in both directions.

Comparison of Business Central and Finance & Supply Chain by operating complexity
Factor	Business Central	Finance & Supply Chain
How different your entities are	A handful, broadly running the same way.	Several, genuinely operating differently.
Countries	Limited international footprint.	Multiple countries with real statutory obligations.
Intercompany	Occasional trading between companies.	Routine trading, transfer pricing and eliminations.
Warehouse	Locations, bins and straightforward picking.	Waves, mobile execution and automation.
Manufacturing	Light to moderate production.	Discrete, process or mixed-mode at scale.
Planning	Practical requirement planning.	Planning against material and capacity constraints.
Controls	Role-based access, modest segregation.	Detailed segregation of duties and audit expectations.
Governance capacity	Lighter governance is proportionate.	Formal design authority and change control are unavoidable.

Business Central

A few questions

A rough steer before you speak to anyone.

Not an automated approval. It gives an honest direction of travel, including when Business Central, recovery or improving what you already run would serve you better, and it carries your answers through so nothing gets retyped.

Question 1 of 5

0 of 5 answered

1. What best describes your situation?

Select one option.

Before you call

The questions leaders ask us first.

A conversation, not a demo

Start with what is becoming hard to run.

Tell us where the group is losing control: entities, planning, warehouse, production or the numbers. We will tell you whether the enterprise platform is justified, whether Business Central would do it for less, and what a sensible first release looks like.

See customer stories

Five companies.Five versions of the truth.

What are Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management?

Financial management

Operations

Connected enterprise ERP

Complexity arrives long before anyone calls it an ERP problem.

Every entity does it differently

Period-end runs on heroics

Promises are made on hope

The cost of getting it wrong is hidden

Leadership reconciles instead of deciding

The areas worth examining before anyone talks about modules.

Customer demand

Procurement and suppliers

Reporting and control

Planning and supply

Finance and close

Roles and access

Inventory and warehouse

Cash and working capital

Control complexity without disconnecting the business.

Connect financial and operational decisions

Plan with better information

Improve operational visibility

Strengthen financial control

Reduce manual handovers

Manage supply risk earlier

Improve warehouse execution

Build on Microsoft

The platform is standard. The way enterprises run it is not.

Manufacturing

Operational decisions are financial decisions.

What you promise

What you do

What it costs

What lands

Bring the exception forward.

Know the customer position before you chase.

Customers describing what we are like to work with.

Business Central or Finance & Supply Chain?

A rough steer before you speak to anyone.

The questions leaders ask us first.

Business Central or Finance & Supply Chain?

Can it handle our manufacturing?

What about multiple countries and entities?

Can a struggling programme be recovered?

Can we do this in 90 days?

Start with what is becoming hard to run.

Related

Five companies.
Five versions of the truth.