Practical Experience
Concrete situations where the approach had immediate impact.
Field service: Dynamics at the front, SAP in the background
A large industrial service provider has SAP deep in the organization: finance, purchasing, inventory management. For customer contact and scheduling mechanics, it was getting bogged down. SAP was not built for that.
The solution: Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement as the front end. Customers call, the call enters Dynamics, a case is created, a mechanic is scheduled. He goes out with a mobile device. Hours worked and materials used he reports back through Dynamics. Only the invoice goes to SAP.
"You also make the unwieldy system much less complex with this. You move the complexity to the front end, the shell that you can adjust much more easily. SAP only has to process the actual purchases, do inventory management and send out invoices."
SAP as a corporate standard, own processes still possible
In multinational companies, SAP is often imposed from headquarters. The local branch has no choice in the ERP, but needs its own customer processes and ways of working. Microsoft Dynamics CE or Power Platform works alongside SAP, driven from the local organization, connected to the corporate backbone.
"With these types of organizations, we no longer care whether it's Finance & Operations or SAP. We work on the front end, on the customer contact, on the processes specific to that organization. The integration with the ERP is always there, but the end user doesn't need to see it."
Speed as proof
Adjustments to SAP processes require change requests, testing, lead times of months. Power Platform works differently.
"The speed, the agility of the Power Platform: that's absolutely a plus. Someone has an idea, a business case comes up, and you can actually build it in a short time. That's fundamentally different than customizing something in an ERP."
