Channel Partner

This project was undertaken for a leading business solutions company with over 600 clients, many of whom are FTSE 100 finance, telecoms and media organisations. Their focus is the transformation of IT infrastructure, Business Process Management, Commerce solutions, Mobile solutions, Analytics and Information Management for clients.

Situation

The client had worked with their Microsoft Dynamics NAV Partner on an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for the management of:

• Core business financials (orders, purchase orders, invoices, ledgers, accruals).
• CRM (contacts, clients, opportunities).
• Jobs, tasks, resources, timesheets and scheduling.

It was determined that the Dynamics NAV ERP system could be enhanced by Ballard Chalmers, with the addition of Microsoft SharePoint to manage all of the client’s controlled documents and other production-related information needed by their software engineers and project managers. This included critical documents such as framework agreements, contracts, quotations, tender and marketing information and documents used by software engineers, such as specifications, architecture diagrams and test scripts.

Finally, the bulk of staff needed access to the information in Microsoft Dynamics NAV on top of when they fill in their timesheet to gain insight into how well the jobs were going.

Solution

Ballard Chalmers produced a portal on Microsoft SharePoint Online in Office 365 to complement the Dynamics NAV ERP system, which does the following:

• Automatically extracts the headline information from NAV for clients, jobs and opportunities.
• Creates a separate SharePoint Server site for each opportunity and job, to be used by sales and production teams to store documents and collaborate. It also displays top-level information and KPIs on the job from NAV so the production team knows the status of each job they are working on.
• Has controlled document libraries and templates for proposals, contracts, framework agreements, purchase orders, Statements of Work, etc.
• The critical libraries such as Proposals have complex workflows that manage the approval of the documents. For example, depending on value and risk level a proposal needs sign off from 1 to 7 managers before it can be sent to the client.
• Provides access to business intelligence dashboards providing up to date information on all aspects of the business from sales to production.
• Provides a knowledge base for departments to use to record information on products and procedures as well as known issues in certain software products.
• Sales strategy forms for each of the top 100 clients.

Architecturally the system is as follows:

The homepage of the site uses the usual Metro Tiles:

The support hours began on go-live of the system with hours purchased on account and called off as they are used. The support is flexible and uncomplicated, being used for fixes, as well as updates, routine maintenance and system health checks.

Outcome

This SharePoint solution was a success and since this work in 2017, we have continued the partnership with ongoing support and projects for other specific business processes such as timesheets, contracts, pre-sale opportunities and the document library.

The Commercial Director gave this feedback on completion of the project, “Ballard Chalmers’ work was a big step forward for the business. We were able to access and manage far more information.”

Geoff Ballard, Chief Technical Officer at Ballard Chalmers said, “The addition of SharePoint Server to the existing Dynamics NAV ERP produced a unified portal that marries the full capabilities of these two systems, bringing the business information needed to all members of the organisation online wherever they are; in the office, at home or elsewhere.”