The perfect Dynamics 365 solution for Professional Services (Part 2)

We’ve combined our years of industry experience and Dynamics 365 expertise, with critical user insight from our existing clients, and developed a new cloud-based ERP solution, for mid and large scale professional services firms.

This is part 2 of a 2 part piece. You can read the first part, here.

Essentials for Professional Services is an optimised, pre-configured Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (Microsoft Dynamics AX) application, based on best-practice industry templates and shaped to meet industry needs.

Hitachi Solutions has made significant enhancements to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (Microsoft Dynamics AX), making it much easier for professional services firms to set up and manage projects effectively. In my last blog I talked about some of the changes that we’ve made:

• Simple project setup
• Enhancements to project manager and practice manager workspaces
• Greater dimension control and improved defaulting

But we’ve also added further functionality extensions that enable easy project forecast entry, help you to identify projects at risk and give you increased flexibility for invoice proposals.

Easy Project Forecast Entry

The Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (Microsoft Dynamics AX) solution has been adapted to make project forecast entry much simpler. Key fields can now be prioritised and comment fields have been expanded so that more information can be collected.

Identification of Projects at Risk

Where no purchase order has been received for the project, projects can be flagged as ‘At risk’. Not only does this provide visibility of projects at risk, it can also be used to prevent customer invoices being issued until the purchase order has been received.

Flexible Invoice Proposals

It is crucial that professional service organisations have a solution for generating invoice proposals that is both robust and flexible.

Essentials for Professional Services enables authorised users to edit payment terms, as well as other relevant fields, before a project invoice proposal is created. This gives you much greater flexibility when it comes to project billing.

How Quickly Can I Benefit From Essentials for Professional Services?

Essentials for Professional Services is available as a cloud-based application from the Microsoft Azure marketplace, which means you can get up and running in a fraction of the time of traditional ERP implementations.

Not only can you benefit quickly from streamlined processes and improved performance, customers also avoid any upfront capital costs, since Essentials for Professional Services is available on a per-user, monthly subscription basis.

New users and functions can always be added as needed, giving you the flexibility you need to support business growth.

What’s Next for Essentials for Professional Services?

At Hitachi Solutions, we know that innovation must be ongoing and that business needs always evolve. That’s why we are making continuous improvements to our Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (Microsoft Dynamics AX) solution for professional services.

We are currently working on further enhancements for time and expense entry and are developing a new mobile app for improved revenue management.

Additional future releases include:

• Full absence management
• Multi-lingual project and procurement categories
• Advanced billing schedules
• Enhanced mobile time and expense entry
• Advanced project status approvals and performance management
• Additional business analytics and intelligence

To find out how Essentials for Professional Services can help you manage projects more efficiently contact a member of the Hitachi Solutions team.