DAC Systems recently implemented Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution at Adcomtec within 60 days, to enable the engineering company to improve its business productivity through eliminating timeous manual-based processes.

About Adcomtec

Formed in 2012, Adcomtec is a professional South African engineering company and value-added solution provider in the telecommunications infrastructure market.

The core expertise of the company is the design, deployment and support of optical transmission networks that support the core, metro, and access space. Its customers include many of the new operators providing optical transport services to hundreds of corporates, enterprises, and residential customers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

Challenge

James Boland, director at Adcomtec, says the company had outgrown its existing accounting system and needed something that would provide more complete ERP functionality.

“Once the decision was made, we compiled a list of requirements which the new system had to fulfil. While it had to be cloud-based, it had to be deployed quickly and tweaked to our requirements without taking too much time and resources. Ideally, an out-of-box solution with all the bells and whistles would provide the foundation which could then be adapted as more functionality was needed.”

After an extensive evaluation of what was available in the market, the company decided on Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Business Central as an affordable investment into ERP with a solution that is user-friendly and can improve employee productivity.

“Dynamics 365 Business Central ticked all our boxes and would provide us with the scalability and rapid deployment required. We could implement it virtually as is with very little customisation needed. We approached several vendors but found DAC Systems made the effort to understand our business and what we wanted out of the ERP solution. The decision was as much because of this good relationship as it was about their ability to implement ERP within a short turnaround time,” says Boland.

Solution

“ERP should not be the complex, risky, and expensive initiative that some businesses have experienced in the past. It should be seen as a differentiator as it will increase productivity and speed up decision-making,” says Chris Willemse, CEO of DAC Systems.

Boland adds that their in-house experience with upgrading ERP combined perfectly with DAC to create a strong team that worked well together.

“The relationship was such that we could easily adapt things as we progressed through the implementation. Both companies worked well together to ensure everything worked as it should. And even when the inevitable challenges occurred, DAC went above and beyond to solve those problems.”

Boland says DAC immediately had the right people working on the project who understood their business.

“They were able to bring their experience from similar projects and assist us in implementing the ERP solution quickly. They would prioritise any problems and get the job done.”

Boland admits that with such a significant ERP implementation, change management was a concern.

“If you do not get people on board, no matter how good the system or quick the implementation is, there will be no adoption. Fortunately, the employees understood the importance of the new system and embraced it by committing to learning how it worked,” he adds.

Benefits

“The previous manual processes and spreadsheet-based system resulted in lots of duplication occurring. Thanks to Dynamics 365 Business Central, this has been eliminated. We can now trust our system and data, and free up our administrative resources to focus on more strategic projects,” Boland says.

Furthermore, the company was able to look at its financial results in real-time and get significant visibility on business performance.

“Our relationship with DAC is very strong and we will definitely be looking at working with them on future projects. They are our business partners now and we are looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship,” says Boland.