Dynamics AX for apparel and footwear

When Microsoft Dynamics AX first hit the market, it was a breakthrough solution for companies looking for a robust ERP system, particularly in apparel, footwear, and manufacturing. With powerful features and the flexibility to manage complex supply chains, multi-channel sales, and global operations, Dynamics AX helped businesses grow and streamline operations. But as technology has evolved, so too has the need for more modern, scalable, and cost-efficient solutions. While Microsoft Dynamics AX on-premises was a great option, it’s time to move to the cloud with Microsoft Dynamics 365.

The Strengths of Microsoft Dynamics AX On-Premises

1. Global Reach and Multi-Channel Capabilities

Dynamics AX allowed businesses to unify operations across multiple regions, thanks to its multi-language and multi-currency features. It made managing global supply chains easier and provided seamless support for both wholesale and retail operations. This capability was essential for brands looking to expand into new markets without overhauling their entire ERP system.

2. Optimized Supply Chain Management

One of the key strengths of Dynamics AX was its ability to simplify complex supply chains. The solution offered enhanced forecasting, inventory control, and SKU management, which allowed businesses to respond quickly to market demands and scale their operations. This level of precision and visibility helped companies minimize costs and improve operational efficiency.

3. Embedded Business Intelligence

Long before data-driven decision-making became a buzzword, Dynamics AX embedded business intelligence tools that enabled companies to turn raw data into actionable insights. The integration of Power BI into the system meant that businesses could easily visualize trends and uncover hidden opportunities across their sales and operational data. This feature empowered leaders at all levels of the organization to make smarter, faster decisions.

4. Customization and Control

Because Dynamics AX was hosted on-premises, businesses had full control over the infrastructure and could customize the system according to their specific needs. This control was particularly appealing to large organizations with complex IT environments, as they could configure the solution to meet their exact business processes and requirements.

The Challenges of On-Premises Hosting

However, while Dynamics AX was a powerful solution, its on-premises hosting model came with several challenges. For one, companies were responsible for maintaining their own IT infrastructure, which required significant investment in hardware, software, and personnel. This not only increased operational costs but also made scaling difficult, as businesses had to invest in more infrastructure to support growth.

Moreover, on-premises systems can’t offer the same level of agility as cloud-based solutions. Updates and upgrades to the software had to be managed internally, often leading to downtime or delayed adoption of new features.

Enter Microsoft Dynamics 365: The Evolution of ERP

Microsoft recognized the limitations of the on-premises model and introduced Microsoft Dynamics 365, a cloud-hosted solution that takes the best of AX and brings it into the future.

1. Scalability and Cost Efficiency

With Dynamics 365, businesses no longer need to worry about maintaining their own servers or infrastructure. The cloud-based model allows companies to scale their operations up or down as needed, without the overhead of on-premises maintenance. This also results in significant cost savings, as companies only pay for the resources they use, rather than investing in infrastructure that may sit idle.

2. Continuous Innovation

One of the biggest benefits of moving to Dynamics 365 is the ability to access the latest features and updates without any disruption. Because the solution is hosted in the cloud, Microsoft can continuously roll out updates, meaning businesses always have access to the most current capabilities without having to manage upgrades themselves.

3. Seamless Integration with Other Microsoft Tools

Just like AX, Dynamics 365 is integrated with Power BI, but it also has native connections to other Microsoft tools like Teams, the Power Platform, and Azure. This makes it easier for businesses to leverage a complete ecosystem of productivity, collaboration, and development tools, all within the same cloud environment.

4. Enhanced Security and Compliance

Dynamics 365 benefits from Microsoft’s world-class cloud security and compliance standards. This is especially important for companies operating in regulated industries or those expanding into global markets, as the solution ensures that data remains secure and compliant with various local and international regulations.

Why It’s Time to Upgrade

While Microsoft Dynamics AX on-premises was a highly successful ERP system for many years, the business landscape has evolved. Companies need solutions that are agile, scalable, and cost-effective—and Microsoft Dynamics 365 delivers on all fronts. It’s the next step for businesses that want to continue growing and innovating without the burdens of maintaining complex IT infrastructure.

Upgrading from Dynamics AX to Dynamics 365 will not only improve operational efficiency but will also enable businesses to take advantage of modern features like AI-driven insights, advanced analytics, and enhanced cloud capabilities that weren’t possible with on-premises systems.

Ready for the Next Step?

Schedule a call with one of our industry experts today. We work with brands, retailers, manufacturers, and distributors to streamline and modernize their operations on a single platform—Dynamics 365.

Case study: Vera Bradley

Case Study: Vera Bradley

When Vera Bradley was ready to move its omni-channel business to the cloud, the team went all in. Embarking on an ambitious project to modernize operations and centralize its data, Vera Bradley replaced its legacy on-premise systems with Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain and Commerce.

Today, Vera Bradley team members have a platform to carry this beloved brand into the future, built on the security of the Microsoft cloud and essential supply chain solutions from Sunrise. Read the case study for more details on why Vera Bradley chose Sunrise, implementation challenges, and its roadmap for the future.

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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.

Leveraging technology to build a resilient supply chain: A framework for fashion, apparel and footwear companies

Leveraging Technology to Build a Resilient Supply Chain: A Framework for Fashion, Apparel and Footwear Companies

Enjoy this talk from Annie Graziani, Sunrise’s fashion expert, from PI Apparel’s Spotlight session on Supply Chain Transparency and Visibility.

Let’s face it: legacy fashion supply chains are broken. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s become apparent that new models are needed to create a more secure, sustainable, and resilient future for fashion and apparel brands. In this talk, Annie discusses some of the challenges and opportunities inherent in today’s fashion landscape.

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Forrester total economic impact of migrating from AX to Dynamics 365

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Can your systems keep your brand’s promises?

As the Chief Administrative Officer for Sunrise Technologies, Heather Essic is responsible for overseeing Sunrise operations, including finance, marketing, and pre-sales. Prior to being named the Chief Administrative Officer, Heather was Sunrise’s Director of Business Development for Existing Customers, leading extensive sales cycles for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and consulting.

Trust. It’s hard to gain, and easy to lose. And for brands, consumer trust is essential for growth. One of the most challenging parts of growing a company is maintaining your brand’s reputation while expanding into new products, channels, and regions. You may be thinking about different expansion strategies. But have you considered all the ways in which your legacy systems might be affected?

What is a brand promise?
Different expansion strategies
How branching out can affect legacy systems
How a global platform supports your brand
Frequently asked questions

What is a brand promise?

A brand promise is the experience or product your customers can expect to receive every time they interact with your company. Customers need to know you, like you, and then trust you. A person’s connection to a brand is built on trust.

Different expansion strategies

There are three paths companies typically follow as they begin to grow:

Products: As a brand becomes more popular, it may branch out into new product categories. For example, a fashion brand may start selling accessories, then handbags, then shoes.
Sales channels: Next, that same brand might open brick and mortar retail stores. Conversely, it might start selling online.
Locations: Finally, this brand is ready to sell products in new regions or countries. Many companies start by using distributors in other countries before opening international offices or stores.

How branching out can affect legacy systems

The biggest challenge, whether you’re opening your first retail store or your first international office, is keeping the brand promise. The biggest mistake we’ve seen companies make during one of these expansions is installing a legacy business application that serves one strategy but not another.

Let’s say you are an apparel company selling to wholesalers in the U.S. — there are plenty of low-cost apparel management systems for your industry. But that type of system will buckle if you try to expand into new channels, markets, or products.

Or maybe you’re a catalog retailer, branching out into wholesale. Can your current systems handle those types of business processes, like B2B accounts receivables, net terms, cash discounts, or chargebacks?

We’ve heard this story many times: a growing brand chooses a business system (or a few legacy applications) for the business they have right now, but not for the future. Then, as the company grows, their legacy systems are strained. The results are poor customer experience, inventory problems, and other nightmares that frustrate customers and erode their trust. As the brand promise falters, eventually so does the brand.

How a single global platform supports your brand’s promise

Don’t be shortsighted when you select an ERP system. The best thing you can do while you’re still a growing brand is choose a business application that can support different products, sales channels, and regions. A global platform, running on a single database can handle these kinds of processes from the beginning.

Frequently asked questions

Aren’t customizations an option?

They are. But customizing your business applications is a short-term solution. They won’t support your company in the long run.

I’m concerned about cost; aren’t global ERP systems expensive and time-consuming?

The ERP industry has evolved over the last few years, especially with the ubiquity of cloud computing. Systems like Dynamics 365 are built for multi-dimensional, global businesses.

I still need industry-specific solutions to run my business. What are my options?

You can definitely use a global system like Dynamics 365 with industry-specific solutions. Our customers use Sunrise 365 Supply Chain and Retail Replenishment solutions to get specific inventory, supply chain, and retail functions for their businesses, without customizing their core ERP software code.

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Season codes: what are you really tracking?

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.

The importance of seasonal products for brands

Some brands live or die by seasons. We work with a lot of apparel and fashion brands, and seasonal inventory is very common for these companies. Winter coats, summer dresses, that sort of thing. While other types of businesses certainly have a seasonal element, there is tremendous pressure for brands to stay on top of the latest trends (or create trends themselves).

Optimize inventory with season codes

Season codes give you the ability to report on a product’s sales performance by season. This is a good thing. Especially for apparel and fashion brands, the styles of products change from year to year. A style may have one season to prove itself, and if it doesn’t sell well, it’s gone next year. Often, we find companies add the season code to a product’s style number — for example, say you make a dress and call it DressF20.

Embedded season codes in style numbers cause problems

At first glance, combining season codes and style numbers seems fine. It makes logical sense. But over time, keeping these two attributes together causes problems. Let’s examine a few:

Problem 1: If you decide to sell across seasons, you need to create new style numbers for the same product

The dress from Fall 2020 was a big hit. You want to carry it next year. Great! However, you’ll now have to make a DressF21 style and move the 2020 inventory to the new 2021 style number.

Problem 2: Carried-over styles need new color and size product variants

The original dress you sold that was so popular — you also have to make new color and size variants for the carried-over style.

Problem 3: You must complete inventory transfers for the new SKUs.

You’ve got your new style number, your new variants — now it’s time to transfer the leftover inventory from the old SKU to the new SKU. Now imagine doing all this work for 10, 20, 30 styles every season. Think about all the time and effort wasted — all because you’re tracking styles and the season code together.

Last season doesn’t really mean last season (for styles)

Ask yourself: what data are you really trying to capture with the season code? Are you trying to document:

When the product was designed?

When the product was manufactured?

The selling season for the product?

A better way to manage seasonal inventory

You may find a more logical attribute than season, or that there are actually multiple “seasons” that have nothing to do with whether it’s snowing outside or not. Maybe design seasons are the way to go. Another way to think about it is in terms of color. Colors lend themselves to seasonality more than style, so you could link a season code with a color rather than a product. The best way to generate season codes will differ for your business, but being thoughtful about what you really need that data for, and setting it up right the first time, can save time and money down the road (no more frantically keying in new product numbers and inventory transfers).

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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!

Product attributes: best practices for product management in a new ERP deployment

So, you’re embarking on a new ERP implementation. It’s a new beginning, a chance to reevaluate, reorganize, and revitalize your business processes. And for consumer brands and retailers, product management is the most important piece of the ERP puzzle.

When starting a new ERP implementation, it’s absolutely critical that you think about how you’ll handle product attribution in your new system. For many companies, it’s a mistake to bring over the old product data structure.

Instead, take this as an opportunity to clean up messy, disorganized data and define a product hierarchy that frees your team from unnecessary and confusing product management.

Product attributes: the lifeblood of your brand

Product is the heart of a brand. Whether you sell jackets or handbags or table lamps (or all these things and more), you must define the type, colors, sizes, and many other dimensions for each product. A company’s product data structure is one of the most complex parts of an ERP system. Almost every area of your business will bring their own data and business logic to the product management party. It’s essential that you maintain clean and accurate data for your products to keep them moving through the system efficiently.

What are product attributes?

For those who don’t know: product attributes describe your brand’s, well, products. For those who are all too familiar: managing product attributes can be a pain, especially in a legacy system. Every time a brand debuts a new collection or starts selling a new category of goods, new attributes must be added to the ERP system.

What’s the best way to manage product attributes?

During a new ERP implementation, you have a rare opportunity to clean up your messy data and streamline your product management. Whatever data structure you decide on, you’ll have to live with for the next several years (or decades). Here’s the process we recommend for cleaning up your product hierarchy:

Step one: define your hard attributes

Hard attributes are characteristics that span your entire organization – examples are Brand, Gender, and Product Type. These are used by the business to sort and filter products. Hard attributes show up in the main forms and reports of a business. You will end up with a few of them.

Step two: define soft attributes

Soft attributes, on the other hand, are where you really slice and dice your product data. These are details that are specific to your product categories — think flammability for clothes, finish for furniture, material for handbags, etc.

Examples of hard attributes

Brand
Gender
Product type

…there will only be a few of these

Examples of soft attributes

Color
Finish
Flammability

…there will be a lot of these

The biggest mistake companies make in their product master data

We see this a lot with legacy systems: ALL the soft attributes, across every product category, are visible for every product. Business users then get confused — why is Finish showing up for a jacket? Why is Flammability listed in the Footwear section? Am I supposed to maintain the water-resistance attribute for my furnishings products? It gets confusing and messy, fast.

Product hierarchies: an opportunity to clean house

It’s usually not a company’s fault that their product masters get so jumbled. Legacy ERP systems don’t handle multiple product categories very well, and people develop customizations and workarounds to get the info they need. Plus, the retail and consumer brands landscape has changed so much – an apparel company that implemented an ERP system in 1999 couldn’t predict that someday, that same company would evolve into a lifestyle brand selling handbags, shoes, accessories, and home décor. Or that a company may acquire another brand that sells a completely different product, like furnishings, or cosmetics.

That’s where a modern, cloud-based ERP comes in: you need a system for handling many different categories, while minimizing confusion and extra work for product management. Adding a new product category should NOT require customizations to your ERP system.

ERP deployment considerations for product master data and attributes

The right ERP system can give you the correct product hierarchy to efficiently manage all your products. Microsoft Dynamics 365 makes it easy to define parent-child product relationships within categories. New soft attributes can be added quickly and attached to the relevant products in your hierarchy. Your users only see what they need to see, and their work is no longer crowded with irrelevant product data.

See how Dynamics 365 handles multidimensional inventory

Are you ready to simplify your product data structure? Want to learn more about how Dynamics 365 can efficiently manage your supply chain and revitalize your company? Get in touch with us today!

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.

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.

Why Microsoft Dynamics AX On-Premises Was a Game-Changer...and Why It’s Time to Move to the Cloud

The Strengths of Microsoft Dynamics AX On-Premises

1. Global Reach and Multi-Channel Capabilities

2. Optimized Supply Chain Management

3. Embedded Business Intelligence

4. Customization and Control

The Challenges of On-Premises Hosting

Enter Microsoft Dynamics 365: The Evolution of ERP

1. Scalability and Cost Efficiency

2. Continuous Innovation

3. Seamless Integration with Other Microsoft Tools

4. Enhanced Security and Compliance

Why It’s Time to Upgrade

Ready for the Next Step?

Case Study: Vera Bradley

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Leveraging Technology to Build a Resilient Supply Chain: A Framework for Fashion, Apparel and Footwear Companies

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Forrester Total Economic Impact of Migrating from AX to Dynamics 365

Get Your Money's Worth

Can your systems keep your brand’s promises?

What is a brand promise?

Different expansion strategies

How branching out can affect legacy systems

How a single global platform supports your brand’s promise

Frequently asked questions

Further Reading

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Remove season codes from style numbers for better inventory management

The importance of seasonal products for brands

Optimize inventory with season codes

Embedded season codes in style numbers cause problems

Problem 1: If you decide to sell across seasons, you need to create new style numbers for the same product

Problem 2: Carried-over styles need new color and size product variants

Problem 3: You must complete inventory transfers for the new SKUs.

Last season doesn’t really mean last season (for styles)

When the product was designed?

When the product was manufactured?

The selling season for the product?

A better way to manage seasonal inventory

Further Reading

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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

Product Attributes a Mess in Your Old ERP?

Product attributes: the lifeblood of your brand

What are product attributes?

What’s the best way to manage product attributes?

Step one: define your hard attributes

Step two: define soft attributes

Examples of hard attributes

Examples of soft attributes

The biggest mistake companies make in their product master data

Product hierarchies: an opportunity to clean house

ERP deployment considerations for product master data and attributes

Further Reading

See how Dynamics 365 handles multidimensional inventory

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?

How Frette Modernized a Heritage Brand on Dynamics 365

Unifying operations on a modern cloud platform

Automation, everywhere