Background
Margie's Travel company (http://www.margiestravel.com/) provides travel services to consumers. These services include package offers, special deals, and excursion add-ons such as jet ski and horseback rides in Jamaica. Margie's Travel negotiates rates with multiple vendors and secures bundled pricing for consumers, serving as a travel broker. Margie's Travel only sells services and does not have any tangible products or merchandise.
Margie's Travel began in 1994 when Margie, CEO, and president, planned group trips for her friends in the United States (US). As this grew organically, Margie's created a second company based in Jamaica, followed by the acquisition of a third company in the United Kingdom (UK). The company has grown fast challenging the current systems that support the business model. Margie has determined it is time to implement Dynamics 365 Finance.
Current environment
Application and environment
The current system has the following structure:
1. In the US, employees use SoftwareA, accounting software, which is a desktop installation package for small businesses and single users.
2. In the UK, employees use SoftwareB, ERP (enterprise resource planning) software installed on local servers. The cost of maintaining SoftwareB licensing is high, and Margie's Travel has decided against the software and associated overhead costs.
3. In Jamaica, employees use SoftwareC, a homegrown application based on spreadsheets. Local sales representatives use pen and paper in the field.
4. Margie's Travel employees use personal email addresses and chat tools and text each other directly due to the lack of corporate tools.
5. IT department resources are located in the US and are responsible for management of all software support.
6. Margie's Travel company does not have standardized processes across the organization.
7. Each country's manager is responsible for system downtime. This has proven to be a challenge due to the multiple time zones across the organization and the centralized IT department.
Vendors and purchasing
As customers purchase packages, Margie's Travel can claim rebates with the providing vendor for every package sold. The rebates are claimed quarterly, and internal workflows have been established for approval prior to vendor submission. The workflows for package offerings eligible for rebates can be complex. User2 has created Visio diagrams for the associated approval processes.
Customer relations
1. Customers exist in all three current countries/regions where Margie's Travel operates.
2. Margie's Travel offers consumers a loyalty program. Consumers can earn points per dollar spent across all in countries in which Margie's operates. The loyalty program is currently managed by using a spreadsheet.
Requirements
Applications and environment
1. All three countries must use Dynamics 365 Finance.
2. The system must allow for updates to be applied at the same time as they are periodically released.
3. Margie's Travel requires that the new business processes be standardized and follow industry best practices.
4. Margie's Travel requires implementation of Office 365 and Microsoft Teams to streamline their operations. The IT department will be responsible for troubleshooting these applications, along with Dynamics 365 Finance.
5. The infrastructure team must ensure that separate environments are created for development and build, prior to moving to test and eventually gold environments.
6. The infrastructure team must move the code for the loyalty program to test environment.
7. The CTO has directed the infrastructure team to guarantee they are on the most current version available at the time of go-live.
8. The go-live activities must be coordinated across all countries, with data validation planned for each time zone.
9. Once user acceptance testing (UAT) has been completed, the project manager must report the number of tenants for production to Microsoft.
10. A report must show seasonality and weather patterns so that Margie's Travel does not offer excursions during timeframes where severe weather is predicted.
11. Sales representatives in the field will only be licensed for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.
Vendor negotiations
1. Rebates must be consolidated at the vendor level.
2. A single claim must be sent to the vendor on a monthly basis for all sales.
Customer relations
1. Customers must be identified with the same customer ID across all companies and systems, and automatically update cross-references as new records are created.
2. Margie's Travel wants to enable customer self-service in the future for customers based in the US and UK. This feature is not planned for the initial system rollout; however, the CIO has asked that the roadmap be created for Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Dynamics 365 Commerce applications in the future. In addition, the CIO wants to ensure that the old customer numbers can be matched to a new standardized format.
3. New customers in Jamaica must be reviewed and approved due to frequent customer data discrepancies. The sales representatives in the field will enter information that must be routed to validate against existing data.
Issues
Applications and environment
1. The IT department needs help troubleshooting post go-live with the least costly solution.
2. The CTO has learned that there are updates to globalization features in Dynamics 365 Finance. The IT staff has been tasked with ensuring that they are the first group to receive these updates.
3. The company is unable to consolidate financials with the existing systems.
4. The current chart of accounts (COA) does not match between the companies. The chart of accounts
must have accounts manually mapped monthly because no controls can be enabled through multiple systems.
5. The CEO is considering the acquisition of additional companies in the same countries as the current companies. The consolidation structure may change within the first 90 days of go-live. Margie's does not want to finalize the consolidation structure for a hard-close at month's end until this has been finalized.
6. Due to resource constraints, the IT department only has the capacity to apply service updates to all countries at once, not as individual tasks.
7. The IT department has limited knowledge of Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and Dynamics 365
Finance. The IT department will be unable to support the applications. The CTO must determine the strategy for managing the support-related risk.
8. The IT department has decided not to code for globalization issues because they are in an upcoming service update. They are closing in on go-live and need to make sure that the updates are applied in time.
9. A mock cutover was conducted. It was unsuccessful due to lack of coordination across the countries.
The lack of success created timing issues with data uploads from centralized IT and validation at the country level. User1 must use a standard template to prevent the mock cutover issue happening at go-live.
Vendor negotiations
1. The rebates cannot be claimed because disparate systems today do not allow for consolidation to ensure that thresholds are met to claim rebates.
2. The accounts receivable and accounts payable departments are unclear about the workflows associated with the rebate process. User2 must ensure that representatives from each department validate that they have tested their respective steps in the overall process. Testing feedback must be communicated to User2.
Customer relations
1. Customers are frustrated because while there is an expectation of white-glove service, customer number and other lookup information is not available in all countries. A customer travelling from the US to the UK must provide multiple pieces of information for them to be re-entered into the country-specific software system. The CIO knows this problem will become worse in the future with the addition of applications to the roadmap.
2. Customer service is unable to access all customer order history because it exists across three different systems. Local installations of software prevent lookups in each system and require a single dashboard to display the information.
3. A hurricane has been predicted for an upcoming tropical destination. Customers who are impacted by the hurricane either want a refund or want to rebook for another date. A customer does not know their customer number, but provides their name, address, and phone number.
4. Margie's Travel learns that the loyalty program across multiple countries is not a standard industry process and is not a standard feature in Dynamics 365 Finance.
5. The project manager does not have a process list to use as a baseline for the project.
6. Customers who sign up for add-on Jamaica excursions bring friends who have not signed up ahead of time. The sales representatives record the customer information on paper, take payment, and then enter the information into the system later. The information is frequently inaccurate and creates discrepancies.