Case studies / Distribution
Case studyDynamics 365 finance and supply chain for a multi-country distributor
A distributor operating in several countries moved orders, stock, invoicing and consolidation onto Microsoft Dynamics 365 with a global template and local tax rules.
Overview
A distributor of industrial consumables and spare parts with operations in several countries across the Middle East and Africa, each with its own sales team and regional warehouse. Head office sits in a regional hub and provides finance, procurement and IT centrally.
Scale. Seven countries with multiple legal entities and currencies, regional warehouses in each country and thousands of customers, from small workshops to large industrial accounts.
The challenge
The distributor had grown country by country, and its systems had grown the same way. Order, stock and invoice data lived in different systems, some local, some central, joined together by exports and the goodwill of a few long-serving staff.
Reconciling orders to invoices was manual. Orders were taken in one system, stock was moved in another and invoices were raised in a third, so every month finance teams in each country matched records line by line to find what had shipped but not been billed, or billed but not shipped.
Consolidated reporting took days. Each country closed its own books in its own way, then sent spreadsheets to head office, where a small team converted currencies, eliminated intercompany balances and assembled group results by hand.
Every attempt at standardisation had stalled in debate. Each country argued, often with good reason, that its tax rules, customers or ways of working were different, and previous projects had tried to settle every difference before moving at all.
The group's banks and investors wanted faster, more reliable reporting, and leadership wanted to add new countries without repeating the same patchwork.
The solution
Finance runs across all legal entities in one Dynamics 365 environment, with multi-currency accounting, intercompany transactions and consolidation built in. Each country closes on the same timetable using the same steps.
Supply chain covers planning and warehousing for every regional warehouse. Stock is visible across the group, and transfers between countries create the right intercompany documents automatically.
Sales order management and pricing follow one model, with customer-specific prices and discounts held centrally and applied consistently. Procurement and vendor management give head office a view of spend and supplier performance across countries.
E-invoicing connects to each country's tax authority where required, and carrier integration produces shipping documents and tracking from the warehouse. Customers can place orders through a self-service ordering portal that reads live stock and pricing.
Power BI reporting draws on the data platform for group and country dashboards covering sales, margin, stock and cash.
Bank connectivity brings statements and payment files into each entity automatically, so cash positions are current across the group. Treasury can see balances in every country each morning instead of waiting for local teams to report them.
The engagement
- Twelve months
- Eight specialists
- Process mapping, Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management with a global template and local variants, sales, procurement, warehousing, Power BI reporting, five integrations and a country-by-country launch.
Integrations
- Bank connectivity
- Carrier integration
- E-invoicing in each country
- Customer ordering portal
- Data platform
How we delivered it
- 01
Map the flows
Seven weeks
We mapped order-to-cash and procure-to-pay across every country, documenting where processes were genuinely different and where they had simply drifted apart.
- 02
Global template, local rules
Sixteen weeks
We configured Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management with one global template and a clear, short list of local variants for tax, e-invoicing and legal reporting. Anything not on the list followed the template.
- 03
Migrate and test end to end
Ten weeks
Master data was cleansed and migrated, and regional teams tested complete flows from customer order through warehouse, invoice and payment, using their own customers and products.
- 04
Country-by-country launch
Nineteen weeks
Countries launched one at a time, with a central support desk staffed by the project team and key users from countries already live.
Results
- One order-to-cash flow across countries
- Fewer stock and invoice mismatches
- Consolidated results available days sooner
- A reusable template for new countries
Order-to-cash became a single flow across countries. An order taken in any country follows the same path to warehouse, invoice and payment, and anyone in the group can see where it stands.
Mismatches between stock and invoices fell. Because the invoice is raised from the shipment in the same system, the monthly line-by-line reconciliation has largely disappeared.
Consolidated results are available much sooner. Head office no longer assembles spreadsheets; it reviews numbers that are already consolidated, and the board receives its pack days earlier than before.
The template has since been used to set up a new country. The local variants list told the team exactly what needed to be decided, and the rest was ready on day one.
The central support desk also changed how countries work together. Key users from early countries helped later ones through their first month, and the network they formed now meets regularly to agree improvements to the template.
Writing down the local variants ended two years of arguing. If it was not on the list, we followed the template.
What made the difference
A global template with clear local variants avoided endless country-by-country debate.
