Inventory Allocation

As the SVP of Global Business Development for Sunrise Technologies, Cem Item serves as a trusted advisor to C-level executives running large global enterprises. He conducts corporate business strategy engagements and digital transformation workshops around the world. With over 20 years of consulting experience, Cem specializes in the textile, apparel, footwear, home furnishings, consumer goods manufacturing, and retail industries.

If hard allocation is the hammer and nails of supply chain, soft allocation is like magnets and a whiteboard.

Defining soft and hard allocation

Allocation (the point where supply meets demand) is one of the most important pieces of the supply chain. So many critical business processes— customer service, inventory, sales — start hinge on smart allocation. Among supply chain professionals, software vendors, and other stakeholders, different words and terms get thrown around and people get confused. Here’s our point of view on hard and soft allocation, and challenges within each.

Very simply, hard allocation means the commitment between supply and demand cannot be changed. It’s been finalized, agreed upon, and now items are ready to go. Soft allocation, on the other hand, has a little wiggle room. Supply can shift as needed. Both practices play an important role in the supply chain, but typically we expect allocation to start out soft. Over time, as conditions change, allocation should get harder. During the planning process, hard and soft allocation can even be tied together.

Key differences between hard and soft allocation

Soft allocation

Supply is flexible, depending on changes to demand. It’s possible to shift quantities and orders as needed.
Usually, in the early stages of planning, soft allocation is the name of the game. Delivery is a long way off.
Deals with planned and firm entities alike.
More planning-oriented.

Hard allocation

Supply is committed to the demand, with no changes.
Delivery date is very soon…think days or weeks.
Only interested in firm entities.
More execution-oriented.

Challenges in the planning process

Planning usually starts with a forecast. Over time, orders are placed and users compare them to the forecast and adjust. The type of business can dictate how planning is handled. For example, wholesale businesses that gradually firm up demand over time may have semi-firm demand like a bulk or blanket sales order. For retail or eCommerce businesses, demand is never locked in until a customer places an order. Things get really complex for companies with multiple channels – retail, ecommerce, and wholesale, for example. Every channel requires different demand planning, from forecasting to bulk orders to placing actual orders.

Meanwhile, you also have planned purchase orders or production orders. Over time, these planned orders are scheduled, or goods are produced and delivered, and placed in inventory. All along the way, a company is juggling many types of supply (planned orders, in-progress orders, inventory, etc.) alongside many types of demand (the forecast, sales orders, standing bulk sales orders, etc.) And it’s the supply chain’s job to strike the delicate balance between the two.

How soft allocation helps you manage your supply chain

Let’s say you’ve just begun a new season, or otherwise in the beginning of the planning cycle. At this point, few orders are confirmed. You have a forecast, but products are still on order or in production, or something in between. This is the worst possible time to start hard allocating supply against the demand. You’ll encounter both inventory headaches from all the effort to re-organize and re-plan when orders are canceled or rescheduled, and you’ll have a bunch of customer service problems, too. This is the time when you should go with the flow. This is where soft allocation is your superstar.

If hard allocation is the hammer and nails of supply chain, soft allocation is like magnets and a whiteboard. While orders are being placed, you should be able to shift supply to demand as priorities change. Seeing the big picture — whether that’s by channel, customer, product, vendor, or other entities — is key to understanding and managing your supply chain for the best results.

Hard allocation comes into play when you’re ready to execute. At this point, you’re dealing with the firmest supply and demand (inventory and sales orders). Releasing the orders might be constrained by fulfillment rules, like no partial shipments, or at least fifty percent of line level is satisfied, or similar. Challenges at this stage are implementing these fulfillment rules while maximizing the amount of inventory that ships. The right allocation solution lets you set up and edit these constraints quickly and easily.

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Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.

Continuous updates: stay current and avoid issues

Scott Hambright is Sunrise’s Director of Global Customer Support. Prior to joining the Global Support Team, Scott was a Senior Technical Architect for Sunrise, assisting clients on ERP implementations in the apparel, retail, consumer goods, and manufacturing industries.

The new ERP update model

The continuous update model has been one of the biggest shifts in modern ERP over the past few years. In the past, companies would spend millions of dollars and go through intensive upgrade projects to migrate to the newer version of whatever ERP they were using.

ERP upgrades used to be expensive and time-consuming, but no more. Instead, companies have replaced one anxiety for another – continuous updates. Dynamics 365, and cloud-based infrastructure, means software updates can be pushed automatically. But this makes people nervous. Since an ERP system handles so many functions within a business, users are wary to just accept the latest updates. But they’re essential for keeping your business humming along. So, you need a strategy for handling continuous updates in a way that maximizes their value and minimizes impact on your business.

Prioritize the most essential business functions

When it comes to updates to your ERP system, focus on maintaining business continuity. Before you start testing, define the most important processes — the ones that you have to get right to keep the lights on. Being able to get orders out the door is far more important than posting a fixed asset depreciation journal. Get your team together and make a list. Plus, it’s easier to define success when you have criteria to refer to.

Focus on testing customizations and extensions

There are generic ERP software functions, and then there are your functions — the customizations and extensions that make your business unique. Get your software vendor to handle testing the basics, like creating sales orders, receiving a purchase order, etc. And if your software vendor can’t or won’t do this for you, find a vendor who will. This testing phase is your opportunity to make up scenarios to ensure your customizations are good to go.

How to handle integration testing

Integrations are the most fragile part of your system, so spend the most time making sure those connections are solid. Luckily, you only have one aspect to test – your connection, not the external system. Here’s one way to do it:

For inbound messages: have a set of sample data prepped before you start
In your test environment: push the sample data through the system (with the new updates) and see what happens.
For outbound messages: export your data in XML format and use file comparison tools to see if anything changed from the new updates.

Use automation to keep up with updates

Most cloud solutions will come with tools to help you test updates. This is where automation comes in handy. You can save significant amounts of time by setting up automated functional and integration testing. There are a lot of options – you can build functional scripts to run through your customizations. You can take data snapshots for use in inbound and outbound integration testing. Obviously, you’ll need a separate software environment to test everything, and a human to oversee this testing process.

We recommend that you aim to make testing your software updates as fast and automated as possible (so if there is a problem, you can devote time to fixing problems, not boring rote work).

Checklist for testing ERP updates

Define the most important business processes and prioritize testing those first.
Create test scenarios for your system’s customizations and extensions. Leave the standard functionality testing to your vendor
Spend the most time on testing integrations – these are the areas that are most unique to your system footprint.
Consider automated testing for functional and integration updates.

See how Dynamics 365 handles inventory management

Are you interested in learning more inventory best practices? Would you like to a see a modern, streamlined allocation solution that gives you both flexibility and accuracy? Contact Sunrise today!

Analyst Reports: Read what industry experts say about Microsoft cloud solutions

Nucleus Research ERP Technology Value Matrix

The ERP Value Matrix reflects the continued shift to the cloud, with vendors seeing accelerated adoption rates. Microsoft continues in its Leader position with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain, Enterprise Edition. All the enterprise capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics for Finance and Supply Chain, Enterprise edition are underpinned by Microsoft’s global delivery strategy that includes 36 geographies and over 60 language localizations. Additionally, the Microsoft business application platform delivers capabilities such as Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, and the Microsoft Dataverse (formerly Common Data Service), helping customers better collect and analyze their data as well as build applications to automate manual tasks.

Microsoft, A Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP

Product-centric organizations are increasingly adopting cloud ERP platforms to standardize operations and drive intelligent automation. The 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ recognizes Microsoft as a Leader for its ongoing innovation and proven ability to support scalable, composable transformation across finance and operations.

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Supply Chain

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management addresses key supply chain challenges. These include limited visibility, adapting to changing customer demands, outdated systems, and disruptions. The solution enhances visibility across the supply chain network, enabling better planning, agility, and asset uptime optimization, ensuring smooth operations even during disruptions. Forrester Consulting conducted a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to assess the potential ROI of deploying Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. The investment led to significant benefits, including:

Increased production volume capacity by 10% to 15% due to faster time-to-market.
Enhanced operational efficiency with a 2% to 3% reduction in unplanned machine downtime, worth over $1.5 million over three years and 500 manufacturing machines.
Increased developer productivity by 10% to 50%, reallocating developer time for higher-value tasks.
A 5% boost in revenue attributed to improved product quality, translating to more than $6.8 million in three years.
Infrastructure footprint consolidation of 35% to 65% by shifting from on-premises to cloud solutions, saving close to $11 million over three years.

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Finance

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Dynamics 365 Finance on their organizations.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four representatives with experience using Dynamics 365 Finance. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that is a retail and wholesale organization with 120 finance personnel and revenue of $750 million per year.

Above Average ROI from Dynamics 365

In analyzing the results of Microsoft Dynamics 365 deployments, Nucleus found that for every dollar spent, companies realized an average of $16.97 in returns. This is significantly higher than the average for both enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), which deliver, on average, $7.23 and $8.71 respectively. Nucleus found that companies taking advantage of Microsoft’s investments in cloud and usability, as well as integration and analytics, were able to achieve significant returns by increasing productivity and revenues and reducing costs. Microsoft’s integration of business capabilities such as ERP, CRM, and HCM with Office 365, Power BI, Power Platform, and Azure offer even greater value than the industry averages and as Microsoft makes further investments in integration and innovation, customers will benefit from the additional value provided by the cloud platform.

The Total Economic Impact™ of Power Apps

Adopting Power Apps can transform a company’s IT function from a blocker to an enabler. One interviewee in the Forrester Total Economic Impact Study said: “We can now build once and deploy to different places….We can now make changes on the fly and support a very dynamic business.” Benefits included:

74 percent less cost to develop an application
188 percent ROI over 3 years, with a net present value of $6.1 million
Average payback period is less than 6 months

The Digital Commerce Imperative

A staggering seventy-six percent of retail and CPG decision-makers agree that improving digital commerce capabilities is their most urgent business priority. And yet for many organizations running on legacy or disparate systems, this goal is far out of reach. Microsoft commissioned Forrester to evaluate how retail and CPG companies are approaching digital commerce improvements today. In this thought leadership report, read key insights about the state of the retail and CPG industries in a post-pandemic world, and how technology leaders plan to invest to make true unified commerce a reality.

The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 For Finance And Operations

Cloud simplicity, gained agility, improved user adoption, and enhanced security were a few of the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. The quantitative benefits over a three year period included:

Increased wholesale revenue by 3 percent, retail revenue by 4 percent and decreased excess inventory and shrinkage by 10 percent
Operational efficiencies reduced cost of goods sold by 10 percent and improved gross margin by 2.4 percent
Employee productivity gains reduced shop floor staffing by 6 percent, increased finance productive by 20 percent, and increased sales productivity by 4 percent
Total benefits resulted in a 60 percent ROI and a 20 month payback period, including legacy license, maintenance, hardware, and admin cost avoidance

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce provides a seamless shopping experience across physical and digital channels. Customers using a network of disparate and inflexible legacy solutions stand to save significant time and money by moving to an integrated omni-channel solution like Commerce. Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study of Dynamics 365 Commerce found:

Improved inventory management to the tune of $3.7 million
Saved $1.9 million through decreased training time
Increased brick and mortar sales by $1.5 million
25 percent eCommerce sales uplift
Payback period of only 17 months

Microsoft Security a Leader in 5 Magic Quadrants

Gartner has named Microsoft Security a Leader in five Magic Quadrants. This is exciting news that we believe speaks to the breadth and depth of our security offerings. Microsoft was identified as a Leader in the following five security areas:

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions
Access Management
Enterprise Information Archiving
Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) tools
Endpoint Protection Platforms

The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Azure IaaS

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a study to examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by shifting some or all their management and operations from on-premises, hosted, and outsourced implementations to Azure’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering. Benefits included:

Improved production efficiency
Reduced datacenter, IT resource, and outsourcing costs
Easier and faster software and hardware management (such as patching and support)

A Platform for Today, Tomorrow, and Decades from Now

Microsoft offers a complete platform at a tremendous value. When you consider the billions of dollars invested in research and development, cloud growth, and long term viability, an investment in Microsoft makes long term sense.

Ready to learn more about what Dynamics 365 can do for your business?

Virtual Warehouse

Warehouse data tells a story

Data tells a story about how a company runs its business. The warehouse table in particular — this core entity reveals so much about how a company manages its inventory. We’re fascinated by the creativity we see and how customers utilize their inventory data in so many ways.

A common setup: virtual warehouses

One way customers can manage inventory is by setting up virtual warehouses. This is when a warehouse that doesn’t exist in physical space is created in their inventory management system, and inventory is added. Virtual warehouses are a technique used to segment inventory. Think of it as “setting aside” a portion of your product for VIP customers or certain channels. Virtual warehouses aren’t necessarily a bad thing – if an important customer, region, or channel made an early commitment to your product, you definitely want to make sure that product is available to them. For single-channel brands or businesses with simple supply chains, virtual warehousing is a perfectly fine way to manage inventory, and a good business practice. But for omni-channel brands, or global organizations selling product in multiple countries, using virtual warehouses to segment inventory can cause problems.

How virtual warehouses cause problems in the supply chain

Problems start to happen when you set up dozens of virtual warehouses in the system to serve different channels, regions, and retail stores. Even though the warehouses are virtual, you still must deal with the same inventory management issues that crop up just like in a physical warehouse. There are overages and shortages. Demand fluctuates. Product that you “set aside” for your customers and channels changes, constantly, and now you must keep up with every warehouse you created. Different operational segments of the business may hide inventory from another, so they can ensure their fulfillment requests are met. It’s not uncommon for us to see a single warehouse storing product, yet the ERP system has four separate virtual locations. How can you fulfill orders from warehouses that don’t exist?

Fixes for virtual warehouses – that actually cause more problems

When businesses start to have these problems with virtual warehouses, they come up with a brilliant solution – virtual transfers! These cause their own sets of problems, though. When this happens, you’re moving too far away from the accurate, real-life understanding of your inventory. To fix this, companies ask their IT departments to write specific algorithms to automate these virtual transfers, which eats up more time and money. And all the while, the brand still must keep fulfilling orders and allocating product. What started out as a simple way to make every channel happy becomes a twisted nightmare of complex rules and business logic. There are also third-party solutions you can buy and implement to make virtual warehouse management easier. But at the end of the day, these solutions don’t fix the core problem: your virtual house inventory doesn’t match your physical inventory, and it’s hard for the business to make good decisions regarding fulfillment, allocation, and how to manage the supply chain.

The solution? Get rid of virtual warehouses

There is a solution for this virtual warehouse madness and prioritizing where inventory gets allocated. An intelligent soft allocation system can dramatically improve omni-channel inventory management. Soft allocation does this by pegging inventory to segments based on demand and supply from a single inventory point (aka a single warehouse). Instead of automating virtual transfers just to balance out inventory inaccuracies, soft allocation is configurable as demands change, with no complex rewriting or rules or algorithms. Users can prioritize inventory, while pulling from a single pool and maintaining global visibility across the entire system.

Frequently asked virtual warehouse questions

What's better, hard or soft allocation?

Soft allocation is the way to go. By keeping inventory transparent, you keep the supply chain moving quickly. Solutions can give you the flexibility to hard allocate once you’re ready to ship, but up until that point, you’ll want to be able to move orders around fast, without unnecessary data entry or manual processes.

If virtual warehouses are so problematic, is there still a case to use them?

We don’t consider virtual warehouses a best practice. For one thing, there is nothing fast about virtual warehouses. Once you start messing around with virtual transfers and virtual overages and shortages, you’ve moved too far away from reality, and your users are going to waste a lot of time trying to make your imaginary warehouse look right. At Sunrise, we advocate for having what’s in your system match your physical inventory, sticking as close to reality as possible.

Is this where negative inventory comes from?

Theoretically, yes, although it’s possible to put systems in place to prevent that. Even with extra business logic, though, solving one problem for virtual warehouses won’t fix everything that’s wrong with using them in the first place. Soft allocation prevents negative inventory from ever being an issue.

Why replace virtual warehouses with a soft allocation solution?

If your brand sells across multiple channels like retail, eCommerce, and wholesale, or they sell in multiple regions or countries, soft allocation is the way to go. The more complex an organization, the smarter it is to keep all the inventory in one big pool. It seems counterintuitive at first, but when done correctly, soft allocation ensures you can meet fulfillment demand and have an accurate, real-world view of your inventory across all your channels.

See how Dynamics 365 handles inventory management

Are you interested in learning more inventory best practices? Would you like to a see a modern, streamlined allocation solution that gives you both flexibility and accuracy? Contact Sunrise today!

Evolve your ERP: Moving from on-premise to the cloud

Evolve Your ERP: Moving from On-Premise to the Cloud

If you’re wondering whether your company’s ERP solution has fallen behind the competitive curve, here’s your answer: More than likely, yes.

Current market research shows that over half of companies’ primary ERPs are at least 5 years old, a precariously long time for fast moving markets. As a result, more than 60% of businesses with at least one ERP solution still mostly rely on legacy on-premises systems.

The reality is that on-premises models are facing an increasingly uncertain future, and forward-thinking companies are behaving accordingly. Faced with an aging on-premise infrastructure, most companies with legacy ERP systems are turning to the cloud as the only viable option. Cloud ERPs have become the new normal.

ERPs are the lifeblood of most major businesses. Good platforms track everything from inventory to monthly close, which is why replacing or upgrading them should be approached with the appropriate amount of respect. When the stakes are high, being proactive is the smart approach.

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Sunrise 365 for Dynamics 365 is TEC certified for fashion, apparel and footwear

Sunrise 365 for Dynamics 365 is TEC Certified for Fashion, Apparel and Footwear

Sunrise is pleased to announce that Sunrise 365^® for Supply Chain and Retail Replenishment has been evaluated and certified for Fashion and Retail by TEC. Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is a leading software industry analyst firm.

To achieve TEC certification, software solution providers must conduct a demo of its product and submit a detailed functionality questionnaire. TEC analysts compare the solution against known benchmarks and provide a detailed review of the software’s features.

To learn how Sunrise 365’s extensions make Dynamics and Sunrise a perfect fit for brands and retailers, download the report today!

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TEC certification report

Review: Sunrise 365 Supply Chain and Retail Replenishment for Fashion and Retail Brands

Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is a leading software industry analyst firm. To achieve TEC certification, software solution providers must conduct a demo and submit a detailed functionality questionnaire. TEC analysts compare the solution against known benchmarks and provide a detailed review of the software’s features. The extensions in Sunrise 365 add support for essential fashion and apparel industry functionality, all seamlessly integrated into Dynamics 365.

Sunrise Customer Stories

Vera Bradley: Dynamics 365 at the Heart of Its Digital Transformation

Get Your Money's Worth

Save time and gain instant value when you deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Sunrise industry extensions.

7 factors for success: Everything you need for a successful ERP implementation

Your guide for accelerating your cloud ERP deployment

People often ask us what they can do to ensure a successful ERP implementation. The thing is, ERP implementation strategies and best practices have evolved since the introduction of cloud ERP. To achieve a successful go-live, it’s important to refine and evolve your methodology as industries change. In this blog, we’re sharing some of our secrets for how to pull off a successful ERP implementation.

Over the last 30 years (and 300+ implementations), we’ve encountered every roadblock you can think of. So, we started to wonder: how can we counter those roadblocks? Is there a way to keep everyone on track and accountable while providing quantifiable metrics for a project’s progress? The answer is yes! We built a tool—Sunrise Quick Start 365^®—to help smooth the path and ensure implementation success.

You already know that successful ERP implementations don’t just happen. It takes hard work from a lot of dedicated people to get a new system up and running. You might have noticed that we haven’t mentioned software yet. That’s because we understand ERP projects aren’t just about implementing software, they’re about people, and how those people embrace or reject a company’s new ERP system can be the difference between success and failure.

There are several ways to approach the implementation of a new ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics 365, and some approaches work better than others. At Sunrise Technologies, we’ve implemented hundreds of ERP solutions powered by Microsoft for our customers in the apparel, footwear, home furnishings, retail, and manufacturing industries. Along the way, we discovered certain methods and best practices for implementing ERP in these industries. If you’re looking for a guide to making your ERP implementation as painless as possible, you’ve come to the right place.

Based on 30 years of experience, we’ve identified seven critical success factors that influence the outcome of a project:

Executive support

It’s vital that your executive team is on board with your ERP project. We know from experience that projects succeed when everyone is working from a single set of facts, which is why Quick Start data resides in a single database, giving both Sunrise and customers an identical view of a project’s status. Power BI dashboards with almost real-time updates give everyone a bird’s-eye view of the implementation and keep people on the same page. Embedding Power BI into Quick Start has been the biggest game-changer since we launched the tool in 2013. Users have a quantitative view of how a project is progressing, and project managers can spot bottlenecks quickly.

Employee involvement

Your ERP implementation team should be composed of the best employees from across your organization. These are your rock stars, the people who know your current processes inside and out. These internal resources should exhibit the ability to understand the overall needs of the company and be entrusted with critical decision-making responsibility and authority.

Quick Start comes with a library of top-notch workflow processes for your industry which helps take care of the repetitive work so consultants can get down to business. Our methodology combines agile and waterfall methodologies, and sprint-based work so our consultants shadow, interview, design, and leave behind a beautiful set of processes and documents.

Clearly defined project scope

Having a well-defined and written scope of work can mean the difference between a failed project with disastrous results and a highly successful project with huge benefits. Your project scope is the basis for the requirements of the project and the resources that need to be deployed. Don’t skimp on scoping. It pays to spend the time upfront making sure EVERYTHING is documented; plus defining clear expectations and establishing overall goals.

Quick Start is more than a task manager. Our dashboards provide a fact-based, quantitative view of your project’s status. Track progress, see how far you’ve come, compare against budget, and see what’s left to do. Implementations, at their heart, are just thousands of tasks (okay, maybe tens of thousands of tasks. To some of you, it probably feels like hundreds of thousands of tasks.) The idea is simple: have a single location where ALL the project tasks are tracked and make it visible to both the client and project teams.

Plan to optimize business processes

One of the most expensive aspects of an implementation is customization. We’ve heard horror stories of thousands of hours sunken into customizing an ERP system that, in the end, still didn’t work for the customer.

Quick Start saves valuable implementation time by providing standardized processes for the repetitive stuff we encounter in every implementation, and a set of best practices:

Datasets pre-configured for apparel, footwear, CPG, and retail companies
Abstract process flow guides aligned with best industry practices
Visibility into timeline and budgets
Tools to facilitate easier instance copying for testing, validation, and migration

We also gave the tool a makeover – now with a modern and simple UI, Quick Start stores everything in the cloud, so users can view a project’s status anywhere, anytime.

Proactive change management

ERP implementations change the way people do their jobs, and no one likes change. It’s important to build in enough time to train people on new systems and processes. After all, you bought a new ERP system to make work easier! Don’t let end users feel like they just swapped an old, clunky headache for a newer, shinier headache.

To make end user training successful, training should start early, preferably before the implementation begins, especially for skills that will help users better implement and utilize the solution. Executives often underestimate the level of education and training necessary to implement an ERP system as well as the associated costs. Top management must be fully committed to incorporating the training cost as part of the ERP budget.

For a successful implementation, you need structured project management, full transparency, and buy-in from users at every level of the organization. We created Sunrise 365^® Quick Start to streamline Dynamics 365 projects, by combining methodology, best practices, and quantifiable progress metrics into a single solution. You can get to go-live faster and experience your company’s digital transformation sooner.

Project management tools

Why would we build a specific tool for ERP project management, when we could pull one off the shelf? Because ERP implementations fail for so many reasons: miscommunications, mismatched expectations, an inability to spot problems before they snowball…the list goes on and on. We set out to create a system that minimizes risk and gives everyone a task-oriented, fact-based view of the implementation in real time. Quick Start is tailored to Sunrise’s sprint-driven methodology. We cover this in much more detail in our methodology blog post, but the bottom line is that it works. By leveraging the knowledge we’ve gained from 30 years of experience and over 300 go-lives, Quick Start provides a structured path to success.

A partner that knows your industry

ERP deployments, especially for consumer brand companies, have many moving parts that impact every aspect of an organization. To help monitor and guide your project’s success, we recommend working with a partner who knows your industry as well as they know the software.

Since the original release, we’ve reconfigured the solution to optimize it for Dynamics 365 implementations. Every feature of Quick Start has been included because we encountered it in real ERP projects. We built this tool from the ground up, and we continue to refine and update Quick Start as our industries change, Microsoft’s software roadmap changes, and new customers go live.

Quick Start: our secret sauce for successful implementations

In 2013 we debuted Quick Start, our Dynamics 365 implementation and project management tool. Since then, Quick Start has become indispensable to our customers and consultants alike. What began as a set of best practices, tips, mappings, datasets, and checklists has evolved into a full-blown, cloud-based project management application, specifically designed for Dynamics 365 implementations. Our customers love Quick Start so much, we wanted to share an updated overview of how Quick Start helps clients save time and money during implementations.

Quick Start saves time and money by packaging our Sunrise implementation methodology with a project management application and embedded Power BI dashboards to track progress. Originally developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3, today Quick Start is built specifically for Dynamics 365 and runs on Microsoft Azure. Power Platform tools like Flow pull data from a single database and Power BI dashboards show project status at a glance.

How to have it all: a blueprint for a successful ERP deployment

There is a solution – we’ve designed Quick Start to ensure your Dynamics 365 implementation is a success. Quick Start is the ultimate blueprint for following the best practices in this blog. And Quick Start is included FREE with every implementation when you partner with Sunrise Technologies.

Ready to See More?

Schedule a personal demo and we’ll show you the ins and outs…the secret sauce…that helps us take clients live on Dynamics 365. You’ll see how Power BI helps monitor project progress, and get the inside scoop on our successful project methodology.

ERP implementation cost calculator

A lot has changed in the few years since cloud computing has become the norm. Very often, we talk to people who are thinking about moving to the cloud, or a new ERP project, but they just can’t wrap their heads around the cost and potential for business disruption. And that’s understandable – an ERP project is a huge undertaking.

But what we wish more people would consider is that the costs of maintaining legacy systems or using outdated business processes is often much higher than an ERP implementation. It’s just tougher to spot these costs. They’re usually so embedded in a company’s way of doing things, that they show up as lost time, lost productivity, and frustrating processes due to outdated technology.

You know your business – but have you quantified all the ways doing nothing is costing your business?

Why Do Organizations Delay Digital Transformation?

Some decision-makers delay digital transformation or spend too much time weighing the pros and cons of cloud computing, thinking their current systems can last for a few more years. But what people may not realize is that the cost of doing nothing – and staying on legacy or on-premise systems – is much riskier in our new world of cloud-based business applications. You could be exposing your business to losses in revenue, security flaws, and system failures.

It may seem like doing nothing is the safest option, but that way of thinking is counterproductive in this new reality of cloud-based infrastructure. Moving to the cloud (and using a cloud-based ERP system) means a company can quickly modify their business models or processes to adapt to changing conditions in their industry. More and more businesses are pursuing growth through acquisition, and folding in newly acquired companies to ancient accounting and supply chain systems can end up costing millions of dollars.

We’re living through a cloud computing renaissance, and companies that don’t adapt are failing. For retail, apparel and fashion companies, the landscape is littered with organizations that have gone out of business, been acquired, or are shadows of their former selves.

All too often, these businesses failed because they couldn’t adapt their business models to serve their customers. And their IT and supply chain systems play a huge role in those failures. Outdated, on-premise, expensive systems that take years of time and millions of dollars to reconfigure to match the new reality – and then the reality changes again. Instead, you could be using a system that is always modern and updated, and ready for whatever twists and turns your industry takes.

Have you thought about the following issues, and considered whether your aging systems are partly to blame?

Losing customers | Losing time | Losing staff | Losing visibility | Losing security

Let’s dig into those 5 areas of your business where the costs of doing nothing might be much higher than you think.

1. Losing customers

If you’re a consumer brand, and you make it hard for consumers to buy your products, they will drop you like a hot potato.

According to Microsoft’s Global State of the Customer report, 66% of US consumers polled ranked customer service as “very important” in their choice of a brand and brand loyalty. But since we know legacy systems don’t easily communicate with CRM and other customer service applications, companies using outdated systems often run into problems.

Everything – from your e-commerce platform to your POS system to your customer service center, right down to your fulfillment center – should create a seamless experience for your customers to buy, exchange, and return products. Look at these warning signs of degrading customer service:

• Complaints about promotional pricing issues

• Complaints about the shopping experience, whether it’s in the store, online, or over the phone

• Delivery issues and shipping delays

• Increase in returns and chargebacks

• Increase in shipping costs

• Purchase histories are spread out across multiple databases

• Your customer service reps’ response time is slowing down; they use multiple systems to answer customer questions.

• Your systems are holding you back from testing new channels like pop-up stores, tradeshows, or wholesale orders online – it’s a huge project just figuring out how you’re going to make those orders work in your system

If you think of every bullet point as an opportunity for lost sales…well, that’s a lot of lost sales.

2. Losing Time

Cliché but true: time is the most valuable resource. And if you are constantly dealing with workarounds and fixes for your outdated ERP system, that’s time you could have spent on revenue-generating projects. On an intellectual level, you know this. In day-to-day operations, though, it’s difficult to quantify lost time. But if your organization is guilty of the following, you’ve got problems:

• Your team members spend more than half the month trying to close out the previous month

• People must ask for reports days or weeks in advance (because it takes days or weeks to create reports)

• People worry about the accuracy of the data they receive, so they hesitate to make decisions

• People are frustrated with the current system, and they come up with their own lengthy workarounds and processes just to avoid using it

• IT is tasked with finding solutions, but not enough budget, and end up buying the equivalent of a box of Band-Aids

Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study for Microsoft Dynamics 365 found that companies who implemented D365 improved operations efficiency by $39 million. When you add in automation, better user experience, reduced rework, and enhanced forecasting, employee productivity increased by $20.6 million.

Look, you can tell yourself it’s fine, or it’s not that bad. But you’re falling behind your competitors. The hours you spend maintaining legacy systems and hardware are hours you could have spent growing the business. Ask your team what projects they would pursue if they didn’t have to maintain whatever dinosaur of a system is back there. How much money are you losing because your employees aren’t innovating, they’re stagnating? Which brings us to….

3. Losing Staff

One of our customers had an interesting problem – their legacy ERP system was still chugging along, but it was getting harder to find IT staff to manage it!

Their system had been around since the early 90s, and several employees were getting ready to retire. All the young, smart IT professionals that this company wanted to hire either had no experience with this green-screen behemoth, or they weren’t interested in working for an organization where their skills would go towards maintaining a dying system.

If your best employees are being lured away to work on new and exciting technology projects, or at the very least, work someplace with technology that isn’t older than they are, it’s way past time for you to think about your long-term strategy. No one wants to jump on a sinking ship.

Not to mention, it’s getting harder for technology vendors to survive. Smaller software vendors are getting gobbled up and on-premise systems are being sunset.

4. Losing Visibility

You can’t trim costs, correct issues, or grow revenue, without control and visibility. But the biggest problem with legacy infrastructure is an inability to control the weakest links of the supply chain. Ask yourself:

• Are inventory and supply chain movements disconnected from the financials, making it impossible to get a real-time view of the business?

• Is one channel hoarding inventory from another channel, leaving excess inventory in one area and shortages in another?

• Do you have trouble completing orders on time and are you unable to provide available-to-promise estimates?

• Are your POS, CRM, and ERP systems already in the cloud, but different clouds with separate vendors and billing cycles that is costing you way more than if they were consolidated on a single platform?

• Do you lack real-time information to make the best decisions quickly because data is locked in silos?

5. Losing Peace of Mind (Because of Security Risks)

Security risks are frightening. And while it’s true that any business can fall victim to a cyberattack, some setups are more vulnerable than others. Think about what would happen to your brand’s reputation if your company was hacked. Can you quantify (or do you even want to think about) the total dollar amount of lost sales from a security incident? Think of each of these points as a crack in your IT’s foundation, exposing you to cybersecurity risks:

• How much time, effort, and money does it take to maintain your current infrastructure, custom code, and integrations?

• Have you cobbled together a bunch of third-party products to make your processes flow the way you want and have trouble reporting and keeping the system up to date?

• How much capital and resources are sunk into maintaining hardware?

The Hidden Costs of Maintaining the Status Quo

Some people think the cost of doing nothing is…free.

Frankly, those people are wrong.

The money you think you’re saving by putting off an ERP or digital transformation project could be slipping away. If your supply chain and underlying technology infrastructure can’t adapt to meet your company’s growth initiatives or customer demand, then your company’s survival in this new, cloud- centric world is at risk. We won’t dive deep into all the advantages of the cloud here. There’s simply too many for this blog post, and that’s why we wrote this cloud eBook.

Ready to See More?

The new landscape of business applications is exciting. It’s possible to get the cloud ERP system of your dreams at a tremendous value, with the industry-specific extensions you need, and without expensive customizations.

If you’ve realized it’s too costly to wait any longer on updating your systems, let’s schedule a digital transformation workshop.

How Frette modernized a heritage brand on Dynamics 365

This post first appeared on Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 blog. Read the original post here. Image: Frette.

One might think that the world’s oldest brands are least resistant to change—as if innovation and heritage are opposing ideas in business. Instead, we can learn a lot about endurance in modern business from brands that have adapted to change for decades or, in the case of luxury linen maker Frette, for more than 155 years.

Since 1860, Frette has crafted luxury linens found in the world’s most prestigious hotels, private homes, royal palaces—even the Titanic and Orient Express. Now the company is taking a big step to bridge it’s past, built on a tradition of quality and customer service, and its future, as an omnichannel business built on Dynamics 365.

Frette initially set out to update its point-of-sale system in its boutiques across the U.S. and Europe. Behind the scenes, however, the company was struggling to present customers with an omnichannel retail experience. The business operated on over a dozen legacy, outdated systems, so there was a need to unite lines of business across European and North American operations.

As Paolo Fabiocchi, CFO of Frette explains, “We started just by looking for a solution for our stores, but once we learned about Dynamics 365, our vision became having true omnichannel capabilities to better serve our customers. That the solution (Dynamics 365) has global, Tier 1 capabilities but is still so much less complex and costly to maintain was what really put it over the top for us.”

Frette met with Sunrise Technologies, an award-winning Dynamics 365 partner, to help modernize the business. Sunrise focused on solving several key challenges, connecting Frette’s business ecosystem, improving visibility across the organization, and automating manual, error-prone processes.

Unifying operations on a modern cloud platform

For many companies, legacy modernization is a daunting initiative, and Frette’s challenge was no exception. The company has multiple divisions to handle hospitality, wholesale, consultancy, and retail businesses—with divisions segmented across Europe, North America, and Asia. With disjointed systems and databases, customer service agents had limited access to inventory and orders, and customers experienced increased order processing times and wait times to check order statuses.

On Dynamics 365, Frette is unifying international systems and business processes. By dismantling data silos, they now have a single platform to run operations—from production to back office to POS. Best of all, Frette can unlock company data for a holistic, 360-degree view of the business, customers, and employees. For example, they can now follow an order from production in Italy to a boutique in New York, with real-time order and inventory status available to frontline workers. Frette also expects to explore IoT, machine learning, and other emerging technologies that will provide pervasive intelligence to reveal insights and trends across the organization.

Automation, everywhere

With company data like orders and inventory scattered across silos, Frette struggled with highly manual processes and a lack of visibility at every level of the organization, from the call center to the C-Suite. Overstocking was common to ensure popular items were on hand. The B2B hospitality business had increased staff by 30 percent in three years to keep up with manual order entries. Ecommerce orders had to be manually duplicated between the POS system and distribution systems. And returning an ecommerce order in store caused hassles on the back end.

Sunrise Technologies focused on streamlining and automating the business, including implementation of its custom supply chain solution that seamlessly integrates with Dynamics 365. Now Frette has a single platform that eliminates time-consuming, error-prone processes while seeing everything from inventory levels, orders, and allocation scenarios in one place.

Soft and hard allocation: understanding the difference

If hard allocation is the hammer and nails of supply chain, soft allocation is like magnets and a whiteboard.

Defining soft and hard allocation

Key differences between hard and soft allocation

Soft allocation

Hard allocation

Challenges in the planning process

How soft allocation helps you manage your supply chain

Further Reading

Start Your Journey with Sunrise Today!

Don't be afraid of continuous updates

The new ERP update model

Prioritize the most essential business functions

Focus on testing customizations and extensions

How to handle integration testing

For inbound messages: have a set of sample data prepped before you start

In your test environment: push the sample data through the system (with the new updates) and see what happens.

For outbound messages: export your data in XML format and use file comparison tools to see if anything changed from the new updates.

Use automation to keep up with updates

Checklist for testing ERP updates

Further Reading

See how Dynamics 365 handles inventory management

Considering Microsoft Dynamics 365? Get Insights from Experts

Nucleus Research ERP Technology Value Matrix

Microsoft, A Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Supply Chain

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Finance

Above Average ROI from Dynamics 365

The Total Economic Impact™ of Power Apps

The Digital Commerce Imperative

The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 For Finance And Operations

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Commerce

Microsoft Security a Leader in 5 Magic Quadrants

The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Azure IaaS

A Platform for Today, Tomorrow, and Decades from Now

Ready to learn more about what Dynamics 365 can do for your business?

Virtual Warehouses Best Practices

Warehouse data tells a story

A common setup: virtual warehouses

How virtual warehouses cause problems in the supply chain

Fixes for virtual warehouses – that actually cause more problems

The solution? Get rid of virtual warehouses

Frequently asked virtual warehouse questions

Further Reading

See how Dynamics 365 handles inventory management

Evolve Your ERP: Moving from On-Premise to the Cloud

Start Your Journey with Sunrise Today!

Sunrise 365 for Dynamics 365 is TEC Certified for Fashion, Apparel and Footwear

Start Your Journey with Sunrise Today!

Review: Sunrise 365 Supply Chain and Retail Replenishment for Fashion and Retail Brands

Sunrise Customer Stories

Get Your Money's Worth

7 Critical Factors for a Successful ERP Implementation

Your guide for accelerating your cloud ERP deployment

Seven aspects of a successful ERP implementation

Executive support

Employee involvement

Clearly defined project scope

Plan to optimize business processes

Proactive change management

Project management tools

A partner that knows your industry

Quick Start: our secret sauce for successful implementations

How to have it all: a blueprint for a successful ERP deployment

Ready to See More?

5 Hidden Costs of Doing Nothing

Why Do Organizations Delay Digital Transformation?

1. Losing customers

2. Losing Time

3. Losing Staff

4. Losing Visibility

5. Losing Peace of Mind (Because of Security Risks)

The Hidden Costs of Maintaining the Status Quo

Further Reading

Ready to See More?

How Frette Modernized a Heritage Brand on Dynamics 365

Unifying operations on a modern cloud platform

Automation, everywhere

The takeaway

Start Your Journey with Sunrise Today!