Author: Ryan Carolan

Fractional D365 Support for Manufacturers After Go-Live

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

Fractional D365 support gives manufacturers senior expertise on their side of the table, for exactly as many hours as the situation needs.

Go-live day feels like the finish line. In manufacturing, it is usually the start of the most important stretch of the whole project.

The first few months after go-live are when production, warehouse, and finance run on the new system for real. It is also when the implementation partner starts scaling back, and when your internal team is still learning how everything fits together.

This blog is for the IT leader at a manufacturing company who is recently live on D365, or about to be, and wants a plan for what comes next. It covers what fractional support looks like, the two moments manufacturers use it most, and a real example from one of our clients.

What fractional D365 support means

Fractional D365 support is a senior independent contractor who works for you part-time, on a set number of hours per week or days per month.

They sit on the client side. That means they work only in your interests, alongside your internal team and, where it is still involved, your implementation partner.

The hours flex with the situation. A few days a month is common once things are stable. A few days a week is common when something needs fixing quickly.

The two moments manufacturers bring in fractional support

1. When go-live has been rough

Sometimes the first weeks on D365 bring production delays, shipping problems, or inventory that does not match what is on the shelf. Your partner is working the issue list, but you need someone on your side who can:

  • Separate configuration issues from process issues
  • Tell you which problems the partner should fix and which your team can own
  • Bring calm to a stressed operation so people can focus

2. When the partner rolls off

Implementation partners are built to deliver projects. Once the statement of work is complete, their senior people move on to the next implementation.

Your team then owns a system they did not fully build. A fractional contractor who knows D365 manufacturing inside out keeps that knowledge in the building. Many of the manufacturers we work with keep a senior contractor on a few days a month for years, purely for continuity. That tribal knowledge is priceless.

For a practical plan of what to improve once you are stable, see the D365 F&O post go-live optimization roadmap.

Our D365Contractors.com community exists to serve D365 ERP customers who want to beef up their internal capability and drive projects forward internally. Chat with us today about our vetted consultants who are ready to jump in and help:

BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

A real example: getting a Midwest manufacturer shipping again

One of our clients is a discrete manufacturer in the US Midwest. A few weeks after going live on D365 Finance & Operations, operations had stalled.

Very little was shipping. Revenue had dropped by more than a third, and the cost to the business was running into millions of dollars. Everyone in the building felt the pressure.

The client needed someone on their side of the table, fast. We placed an independent D365 contractor with deep production and operations experience, working directly for the client at around 25 hours a week on a six-month engagement. Which turned into over 12 months (so far).

Their first job was bringing some calm to the situation. From there, the work focused on three things:

  • Pinpointing the configuration fixes. They identified exactly where the setup needed correcting, so the implementation partner could come back and fix it with a clear, specific list.
  • Improving internal processes. They highlighted operational changes the client’s own team could make, so issues were handled better in-house.
  • Getting product out the door. With both workstreams moving, the plant started shipping again.

The part I like most about this story is how the work was split. The partner fixed what the partner needed to fix. The client’s team got stronger. And one senior person on the client side made sure both happened at the same time.

What a good fractional D365 contractor does first

Whether you are stabilizing or planning for the long term, the first few weeks usually follow the same pattern:

  • Listen first. Walk the plant floor, sit with planners and warehouse leads, and understand how the business actually runs.
  • Triage the issue list. Sort every open item into partner fixes, internal process fixes, and training gaps.
  • Protect revenue first. Focus on whatever is stopping production or shipping before anything else.
  • Build internal capability. Leave your team more confident each week, so they depend less on outside help over time.

That last point matters. The goal of fractional support is a stronger internal team. For a structured way to assess yours, see how to build your internal D365 ERP team.

How many hours do you actually need?

It depends on where you are.

  • Stabilizing after a rough go-live: typically 20 to 40 hours a week for a few months, often with some onsite time at the start.
  • Steady state after the partner rolls off: typically a few days a month, scaling up around enhancements, new sites, or year-end.

The right contractor will tell you honestly when it is time to scale back.

Frequently asked questions

What is fractional D365 support?

Fractional D365 support is a senior independent Dynamics 365 contractor who works for your company part-time, on a set number of hours per week or days per month. They work on the client side, alongside your internal team and implementation partner.

Can a fractional contractor work alongside our implementation partner?

Yes, and this is one of the most common setups. The contractor gives you independent oversight, helps prioritize the partner’s fix list, and makes sure issues are resolved in a way that suits how your plants actually operate.

When should a manufacturer bring in fractional support?

The two most common moments are a difficult go-live, when you need senior help on your side quickly, and the point where your implementation partner rolls off, when you need continuity and ongoing expertise.

Can we scale fractional support up and down?

Yes. Most engagements start with more hours during stabilization and drop to a few days a month once things are running smoothly. You engage for as long as you need.

Find the right D365 specialist for your plant

The right fractional contractor has already run D365 in a real production environment and knows what “normal” looks like on the plant floor.

Our guide to how manufacturers hire D365 manufacturing contractors covers the modules, roles, vetting, and pricing in one place.

If you are recently live on D365 and need someone in your corner, or your partner is about to roll off and you want continuity, we can help. We typically present two or three vetted matches within 48 hours:

BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of D365Contractors.com, connecting North American companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

How to Write a D365 Contractor Job Description for Manufacturing

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

A well-scoped D365 contractor job description is the fastest way for a manufacturer to get the right specialist into their project.

When a manufacturer asks me for “a senior D365 consultant with manufacturing experience,” I know the first conversation is going to be a long one. That description fits hundreds of people. Most of them are the wrong fit for that specific project.

After 14 years placing Dynamics specialists into manufacturing implementations across the US, the pattern I see is consistent. The manufacturers who get the right person quickly describe the work in detail before they describe the person.

This blog is for the IT leader who is about to bring in a D365 contractor and wants to get it right the first time. It covers the five details every job description should name, a real example from one of our clients, and a simple template you can copy.

Why a general job description attracts general candidates

D365 Finance & Operations is a huge platform. A consultant who has spent ten years configuring warehouse flows for a distributor has a very different skill set from one who has spent ten years in cost accounting for a process manufacturer.

Both can honestly call themselves “senior D365 consultants with manufacturing experience.”

A general job description also slows your team down. Every interview turns into a discovery session, and you end up scoping the role in the middle of the hiring process.

What a strong D365 contractor job description names

Before you write the job description, scope the work. These five details do most of the heavy lifting.

1. Your manufacturing model

Say whether you run discrete, process, or mixed-mode manufacturing. Discrete runs on bills of material and production orders. Process runs on formulas, batch orders, and co-products. A contractor who is excellent in one can take months to find their feet in the other.

2. The modules, by name

Lead with the modules. Each of these has its own specialists:

  • Production Control
  • Master Planning
  • Advanced Warehouse Management
  • Cost Accounting
  • General Ledger and financial dimensions

Naming them gives you a far closer match than a job title alone.

3. Your project stage

Pre-selection, design, build, testing, cutover, and post go-live each call for a different kind of help. A contractor who thrives in design workshops may be the wrong person for a cutover weekend.

4. Operations, finance, or both

In manufacturing, the operations and finance workstreams are tightly connected. Production orders drive inventory valuation, and inventory valuation drives your month-end close. Tell candidates which side the role sits on and who they will work alongside on the other side.

5. How the work gets done

Include expected hours, likely duration, and onsite needs such as plant visits, workshops, or cutover support. Good contractors plan their calendars months ahead, and this detail helps them say yes quickly.

Our D365Contractors.com community exists to serve D365 ERP customers who want to beef up their internal capability and drive projects forward internally. Chat with us today about our vetted consultants who are ready to jump in and help:
BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

A real example: the D365 upgrade that started with the general ledger

One of our clients is a multi-site US fresh produce business that grows, packs, and ships its own products. They were running Dynamics AX and planning their move to D365.

When we first spoke, the conversation was all about the upgrade. As we dug into the detail, one issue kept coming up. Their general ledger structure in AX had become the bottleneck for everything else on the ERP roadmap.

Leadership couldn’t get the reporting they needed from it. The steering committee had stalled, because nobody could picture what “better” looked like.

So we scoped the role around that problem, and the job description became very specific:

  • Model: Vertically integrated agribusiness, covering growing, processing, and distribution
  • Modules: General Ledger, financial dimensions, and chart of accounts design
  • Stage: Pre-upgrade groundwork on Dynamics AX, ahead of D365
  • Side of the house: Finance, working closely with operations and BI
  • Deliverable: A restructured GL design that leadership could sign off on

We placed an independent D365 finance contractor with deep GL experience. He produced:

  • A chart of accounts design
  • A financial dimension analysis
  • Mapping tables from the old structure to the new one
  • A process improvement matrix
  • A dated project plan for the finance and reporting workstream

The biggest shift was in the room. Leadership could finally see a GL structure they believed in, with a clear path to the reports they needed. The steering committee moved from debating the problem to working through a sequenced plan.

The client has since continued building out their team with further specialists for the D365 journey.

That result came from a job description that named the real problem. A general “D365 upgrade consultant” search would likely have found someone strong on the new platform, while the GL issue kept blocking progress.

If your own project is heading toward a data or finance crunch, why D365 F&O data readiness is the number one project killer covers the warning signs.

A simple D365 contractor job description template

Copy this and fill it in before you speak to anyone. One page is plenty.

  • About us: Industry, manufacturing model, number of sites
  • Platform: D365 F&O, Business Central, or a legacy system such as AX
  • Project stage: Where you are today and your next milestone
  • Modules in scope: List them by name
  • The problem to solve: One or two sentences in plain language
  • Side of the house: Operations, finance, or both
  • Who they work with: Internal team, implementation partner, other contractors
  • Deliverables: What “done” looks like
  • Logistics: Hours per week, expected duration, onsite needs

Frequently asked questions

What should a D365 contractor job description include?

Your manufacturing model, the specific D365 modules in scope, your project stage, whether the role is operations or finance focused, the deliverables, and practical details like hours, duration, and onsite needs.

Should a manufacturer hire a D365 finance contractor or an operations contractor first?

It depends on where your biggest risk sits. If your chart of accounts or financial dimensions are unresolved, finance often comes first, because dimension design is very hard to change once you are transacting. If planning or production is the pain point, start on the operations side.

Can I bring in a D365 contractor alongside my implementation partner?

Yes. Many manufacturers bring in an independent contractor to strengthen a specific workstream while their partner continues to deliver. A clearly scoped job description also makes it easier to define where the partner’s scope ends and the contractor’s begins. The buyer’s guide to choosing a D365 implementation partner for manufacturing covers the partner side.

Find the right specialist for your plant

A well-scoped job description does half the work. The other half is getting it in front of contractors who have delivered D365 in a real production environment.

Our guide to how manufacturers hire D365 manufacturing contractors covers the modules, roles, vetting, and pricing in one place.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your job description, or you already know the gap and need the right person to fill it, we can help. Our independent D365 experts have delivered in real plants, and we typically present two or three vetted matches within 48 hours:
BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of D365Contractors.com, connecting North American companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

Microsoft Certifications: Do They Matter When Hiring Dynamics 365 Consultants?

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

Last updated: July 2, 2026

I heard a consulting firm open a pitch recently with “90% of our consultants are Microsoft certified.” My driver’s license says I can tow a trailer. You do not want to be behind me on the highway.

So, do D365 consultant certifications matter when you are choosing who builds your ERP? They matter as a floor and a tiebreaker. The deciding factor should be hands-on implementation experience, because Microsoft’s own partner program awards a firm maximum skilling points with as few as seven certified individuals. A big certification number tells you about partner program math. It tells you very little about the team walking into your project on Monday.

What do D365 consultant certifications actually prove?

A certification proves someone studied the product and passed an exam. That is a real signal. It shows commitment, it shows baseline product knowledge, and for junior consultants it is a solid way to build fundamentals.

Here is what the exam does not cover. It does not prove the holder has sat in a room with a plant manager who refuses to change his receiving process. It does not prove they have watched a data migration fall over at 2am on cutover weekend and known which of the six possible causes to check first. It does not prove they understand why a food manufacturer cares about catch weight, lot traceability, or what happens when a wave template is configured by someone who has never stood on a warehouse floor.

You can be great in theory and still make expensive decisions in practice. Some of the sharpest exam-passers I have met were recent graduates who knew every menu path in Finance and Operations and had never seen a month-end close under pressure. Smart people, bright futures, learning fast. Just not the people I would put in charge of your design decisions at $250 to $300 per hour.

You do not have to take my word for it either. At our June D365Contractors.com community meetup, our guest was a Microsoft MVP of 13 years who has spent 12 of them writing the actual certification exam questions. His verdict on what the exams measure: “almost everything is memorization.” He said it himself: they do not want to test how good a test taker you are, which is exactly why Microsoft is now building hands-on Applied Skills assessments that make you touch the software instead of recall it.

Why do consulting firms lead with certification counts?

Because Microsoft asks them to. To hold a Solutions Partner for Business Applications designation, a firm needs certified people on staff. The partner capability score counts each certified individual toward a skilling total, and an enterprise firm hits the maximum skilling points with seven certified people.

That is a sensible program requirement, and partners are right to invest in it. It just means a certification count is partly a scorecard for Microsoft, kept healthy for the designation. When it shows up as the headline of a sales pitch aimed at you, remember who the metric was designed for.

There is also a quieter reason. Certifications are easy to count. Go-live scar tissue is hard to put on a slide. When a firm leads with the number that is easy to measure, your job is to ask about the things that are hard to measure. The questions below will do that for you.

When should a certification pitch worry you?

A certification brag is fine on its own. Watch for these combinations:

  • The count is the whole pitch. If certified headcount is the lead credential and project outcomes come second, ask for the outcomes first.
  • They cannot name your team. A firm-wide statistic means nothing if the certified architects are on someone else’s project and yours gets the people who passed their exams last quarter.
  • Senior rates, junior scar tissue. If everyone on the proposed team is billed at a senior rate, ask how many D365 F&O implementations each named person has taken through go-live. Certifications at $250 to $300 per hour deserve that question.

If you are already deep into a partner relationship and wondering how healthy it is, the Partner Dependency Assessment takes about five minutes and will tell you where you stand.

How do you vet for real D365 F&O experience?

Five questions. I have used versions of these across hundreds of contractor placements, and they separate exam knowledge from implementation experience in under an hour.

1. “Walk me through your last go-live weekend.”

Experienced people answer with specifics: what broke, what they checked, what they would stage differently next time. Exam knowledge answers with process diagrams.

2. “What did you do, personally?”

Listen for “I did this” versus “we did this.” A consultant who was truly hands-on can describe their own decisions. Someone who watched from the sidelines describes the team’s.

3. “What would you do differently on your last project?”

Real practitioners have a list ready. People without scar tissue have to invent one.

4. “Tell me about our industry.”

If you make food, ask about catch weight and lot tracking. If you run warehouses, ask about wave processing. The answer either has texture or it does not, and you will know within two minutes.

5. “Who can I call?”

Ask for a reference from an implementation comparable to yours in size and industry. Then actually call.

Where certifications fit into this: treat them as the tiebreaker between two people who both pass the five questions. That is their honest weight.

Can someone without a current certification outperform a certified architect?

Yes, and I see it regularly. Some of the strongest independent consultants I know have not sat an exam since the AX 2009 days. They have spent the fifteen years since inside implementations, and I have watched them run rings around consultants holding the Solution Architect certification. The exam changed names several times in those fifteen years. The skill of getting a manufacturer live did not.

That is a pattern I see across the independent D365 contractors we work with. The vetting that matters checks projects delivered, references, and depth in your industry. When those are strong, the certificate on the wall is a nice extra.

Are certifications getting more relevant with AI?

They are getting more interesting, and this is worth watching. Microsoft is retiring the classic MB exam family and rebuilding the tracks around AI. The Finance and Operations Solution Architect exam (MB-700) retired on June 30, 2026, the Supply Chain expert exam (MB-335) retired the same day with no replacement announced, and new “AB” tracks are taking their place (Microsoft exam updates). The headline credential is AB-100, the Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect, covering Copilot Studio and AI Foundry.

We spent our June D365Contractors.com community meetup on exactly this, walked through by the exam writer I mentioned above. Here is what the shake-up means for your next hire. A consultant whose certification lapsed this summer may simply hold a retired exam with no replacement yet, so do not read a gap on the resume as a red flag on its own. And with AI, nobody has years of hands-on experience with agents in D365, certified or otherwise. The agent tooling grew up on the Customer Engagement side of the product, so even seasoned F&O architects are climbing this curve right now.

So when you evaluate someone for the AI piece of your roadmap, ask what they have actually built with Copilot Studio, and treat the new AB certifications as a sign of someone keeping current. On this one topic, a fresh cert carries more weight than usual, because structured learning is the only mileage anyone can have yet.

The bottom line for your next hiring decision

Certifications are a floor, a tiebreaker, and a signal of learning habits. Choose your partner and your contractors on delivered implementations, industry depth, and references you have actually called. The five questions above will get you there, and they cost nothing to ask. Your project is decided by the people in the room, so pick the people, and let the wall decorations be a bonus. Where those decisions fall in your program is mapped stage by stage on The ERP Journey.

If you are choosing a partner right now, or staring at a proposal full of certified consultants you have never met, I am happy to be a second pair of eyes. I have spent 14 years vetting D365 people for a living.

BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

FAQ: D365 consultant certifications and experience

Are Microsoft D365 certifications worth anything?

Yes. They prove baseline product knowledge and a commitment to learning, and they are a fair tiebreaker between two otherwise equal consultants. They do not prove implementation experience, which is the stronger predictor of project success.

Why do Microsoft partners talk about certification counts so much?

Microsoft’s Solutions Partner designation requires certified staff, and an enterprise partner reaches maximum skilling points with seven certified people. The count is a partner program metric first and a sales message second.

Do independent D365 contractors keep their certifications current?

It varies. Many senior independents prioritize delivery over exams, and some of the best have not recertified since the AX era. Vet them on implementations delivered, industry depth, and references rather than exam dates.

How do I verify a D365 consultant’s real experience before hiring?

Ask them to walk through their last go-live, listen for “I did this” versus “we did this,” and ask what they would do differently on their last project. Then check a reference from an implementation comparable to yours.

How much does an experienced independent D365 contractor cost compared to a partner consultant?

Partner consultants typically bill $250 to $300 per hour. Experienced independent D365 F&O contractors typically run $150 to $200 per hour, and you interview the exact person who does the work.

Are Microsoft certifications changing because of AI?

Yes. Microsoft retired the F&O Solution Architect exam (MB-700) on June 30, 2026, and new AI-focused tracks like AB-100 (Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect) are replacing the classic paths. Expect Copilot and agent skills to run through most role-based certifications.

Should I reject a consultant for not holding a current certification?

Ask about their delivery record first. A consultant with several comparable implementations and strong references is a safer choice than a certified consultant with neither. Use certifications to break ties, and to gauge learning habits.

About D365Contractors.com

D365Contractors.com is an elite community of pre-vetted independent Microsoft Dynamics 365 contractors serving companies across North America. Members are senior specialists across Finance and Operations, Business Central, and Customer Engagement. Hiring managers are matched with two to three carefully chosen contractors within 48 hours, at transparent rates.

About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of d365contractors.com, connecting US manufacturing companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 Finance & Supply Chain Management experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into manufacturing implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

D365 ERP Agents: What IT Leaders Need to Ask Partners Now

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

D365 ERP agents are already changing how implementations get built, priced, and delivered.

A Microsoft Solution Engineer who covers enterprise accounts in the US recently joined one of our monthly D365contractors.com community calls. Former D365 end user, now working at Microsoft on the enterprise side.

He demonstrated D365 ERP agents live: a Copilot Studio agent connected to a real D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management environment, creating sales orders and pulling trial balances from natural language prompts.

No forms. No navigation. Just a typed instruction and a completed transaction.

The technology is impressive. However, for IT leaders at manufacturing companies, the more important story is what the community discussion revealed about partner readiness, implementation pricing, and the questions you should be asking right now.

This blog is for the IT leader who is curious about the reality of ERP agents for D365. It is written from your side of the table. Because while your partner builds the SOW, you sign it. And the economics of that SOW are shifting faster than most partners are willing to admit.

What D365 ERP agents actually did on the call

This was a live demo on a real D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management environment. Specifically, the Microsoft engineer connected a Copilot Studio agent to D365 using the MCP server, which opens up roughly 600,000 actions within the system.

He typed a natural language instruction, and the agent:

  • Created a sales order
  • Looked up products
  • Pulled a trial balance

No clicking through forms. No custom development.

He also shared a story from his own career as an end user. While working in the mining industry, one of their biggest headaches was creating bulk orders. They needed 100 sales orders at a time. That used to require custom X++ development, budget approval, and weeks of lead time. Now an agent does it from a typed prompt.

His exact words: “I thought it was BS. It’s not.”

For context, this is someone who reviews partner Statements of Work for Microsoft’s enterprise accounts. Essentially, he sees what partners are quoting, and he is already pushing back on pricing that does not reflect what D365 ERP agents can do.

When someone at Microsoft is telling partners their pricing models need to change, IT leaders should be paying attention.

Our D365contractors.com community exists to serve D365 ERP customers who want to beef up their internal capability and drive projects forward internally. Chat with us today about our vetted consultants who are ready to jump in and help:
BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

D365 ERP agents and your implementation budget

The engineer’s point was blunt: if AI tools can significantly reduce development time, why are partners still quoting the same hours?

In fact, he said some partners’ entire pricing structures for project costs “you could throw in the garbage.” That is a strong statement from someone who works at Microsoft and reviews SOWs for a living.

One of the independent consultants on the call reinforced this from the buyer’s side. She is currently evaluating nine partner RFP responses for a client’s multi-year D365 implementation. Her observation:

  • Not one of the nine partners is pushing AI capabilities
  • None have adjusted their development pricing to reflect what agents can do
  • She expected a much stronger push and was surprised it was absent

For IT leaders, this raises an uncomfortable question. If you are about to sign a multi-million dollar SOW that prices custom development at traditional rates, are you overpaying for work that could be done faster with D365 ERP agents?

The answer is not necessarily yes for everything. However, the question deserves to be asked. The detailed partner evaluation framework in how to choose your D365 F&O implementation partner is a good starting point, and AI readiness should now be a core part of that conversation.

4 questions to ask your partner about D365 ERP agents

Based on the community discussion, here are four questions every IT leader should be asking their implementation partner right now.

1. What is your AI and agent strategy for D365 implementations?

This is the baseline question. Currently, if your partner cannot articulate how they are using Copilot Studio, MCP servers, or AI Foundry in their delivery model, they have not started thinking about it.

That does not necessarily make them a bad partner. However, it does mean they are not yet adapting to tools that already exist and already work. The Microsoft engineer on our call is asking this of every partner he works with. You should too.

2. How does this affect your development pricing?

If agents can handle tasks that previously required custom X++ development, are those hours reflected in your quote? For instance:

  • Bulk order creation
  • Certain data processing workflows
  • Ad hoc reporting

The engineer shared his example from the mining industry: creating 100 orders used to require custom development. Now an agent does it. If your partner is still quoting development hours for work that agents can handle, ask why.

The questions in 5 questions to answer before you talk to any D365 F&O vendor will help you structure the broader evaluation.

3. What agent use cases have you actually deployed?

There is a significant difference between a partner who has a slide about AI and a partner who has built and deployed agents on real client projects. Instead of accepting vague claims, ask for specifics. Which processes? What were the outcomes?

During the call, the engineer described a real customer example: a document parsing workflow where the agent extracted data from a MILL weight kit through OCR, loaded it into Dataverse, and then populated specific D365 fields. All through Copilot Studio instructions. No traditional development required.

That is the kind of example you want to hear from your partner.

4. What does your Copilot Studio training plan look like for my team?

Importantly, the engineer’s advice to every partner he works with is that Copilot Studio training should be part of every implementation engagement.

If your partner’s training plan covers D365 navigation and standard processes but does not include how to build and use agents, you are being prepared for yesterday’s platform.

Building internal capability is always the goal. The assessment in how to build your internal D365 ERP team is a good place to start.

The use cases that should be on your radar

The community call surfaced several practical use cases where D365 ERP agents are already delivering value.

Return order processing. For example, the engineer described a scenario where:

  • A customer email triggers an agent
  • The agent communicates with the customer and pulls up their last five orders
  • The customer identifies the order in question
  • The return order is created automatically with case management triggered in the background

No forms, no manual data entry, no development.

Cross-entity inventory visibility. Similarly, an agent can see inventory across multiple legal entities without requiring the Inventory Visibility module. For manufacturing companies running multiple plants, that is a significant capability that previously required additional configuration and licensing.

Ad hoc reporting. Additionally, the analytics capability within the MCP framework allows your team to pull ad hoc reports directly from D365 in any file format. The engineer expects roughly 30% of F&O users will shift to Teams-based reporting. For C-suite stakeholders who want a quick answer without logging into D365, this changes the experience entirely.

Bulk data entry. Any process where your team is manually creating transactions in volume is a candidate for agent-based automation. The economics are worth comparing against Power Automate or hiring temporary data entry support. Learn more about how independent contractors’ D365 F&O capabilities are evolving with these tools.

Data governance matters even more now

The most sobering moment on the call came from a consultant who has been in the D365 space for 18 years.

Her point was direct: “You can do the best implementation in the world, but if they are not keeping their data clean six months afterwards, they are going to say Copilot is garbage. And it is not Copilot.”

Moreover, she mentioned that in 18 years, she could count on one hand the number of clients who had proper data governance in place. Two. That is the reality.

D365 ERP agents pull data directly from your system to make decisions and complete tasks. Consequently, if your vendor master has duplicates, your item master has inconsistent naming, or your inventory data does not match physical counts, the agent will confidently do the wrong thing. Fast.

An agent creating orders against dirty customer data is not a productivity gain. It is an automated way to make mistakes at scale.

This means data governance is no longer just an implementation readiness issue. It is an ongoing operational requirement. Additionally, every agent needs:

  • Proper security roles configured around it
  • FDDS (Function-based Data Security) applied
  • An Entity ID assigned for governance

The governance layer is just as important as the technology layer. We covered why data readiness matters so much in why D365 F&O data readiness is the number one project killer. That blog is even more relevant now.

What is on the D365 ERP agents roadmap

The Microsoft engineer also shared several things on the roadmap that reinforce the urgency of getting ahead of this.

  • Agent Zero is coming: a centralized hub for managing all agents with full governance. Think of it as the control center for every agent running in the environment.
  • An agent for configuring F&O environments is actively being built. That alone should change how you think about implementation timelines and what your partner is quoting for configuration work.
  • The MCP server is expanding to include the Data Management module, which will open up bulk import and export capabilities for migration and integration scenarios.
  • Dataverse and F&O storage are being consolidated into a single model. For companies running Project Operations, Field Services, or CRM alongside F&O, this means faster data retrieval and more unified reporting.

These are not distant promises. In fact, some are already in preview. The 2026 Release Wave 1 plans confirm the direction Microsoft is moving.

Should you wait for this to mature?

No. The engineer was clear. Fundamentally, the technology is working today. It is going to get faster and cheaper. Waiting does not give you an advantage. It gives your competitors a head start.

Instead, make sure your implementation is built on a solid foundation that can take advantage of D365 ERP agents as they mature. That means:

  • Clean data from day one
  • Strong internal team capability so you are not entirely dependent on external consultants to build and manage agents
  • A partner who is actively adapting their delivery model

If you are currently mid-implementation, start identifying use cases where agents could replace custom development or manual processes. The practical roadmap in D365 F&O post go-live optimization can help you structure where agent-based improvements fit into your priorities.

Ultimately, D365 ERP agents are changing the economics and the speed of what is possible. The IT leaders who get the best outcomes will be the ones who understand that shift early and ask the right questions before the SOW is signed.

If you want to talk through how D365 ERP agents might affect your current or upcoming implementation, or if you need independent advice on whether your partner is keeping up, we can help. Our independent D365 experts have no partner agenda and will tell you exactly what they see:
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About the Author
Ryan Carolan is the founder of d365contractors.com, connecting North American companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into implementations across the US.Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

Building an Internal D365 ERP Team For Your Implementation

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

Building an internal D365 ERP team is the part of implementation planning that most IT leaders struggle with. Yes: they name the people, commit the headcount, and check the box. But there is a massive difference between assigning people to a project and building an internal D365 ERP team that can actually own a multi-million dollar transformation.

This blog is for the IT leader who has been told “you need internal resources on this project” and is now trying to figure out what that actually means. Not simply how many people. What capabilities. Because the difference between assigning people to a project and building an internal D365 ERP team that can actually own the outcome is where most implementations quietly start to drift.

The 5 capabilities your internal D365 ERP team actually needs

Building an internal D365 ERP team is more about quality than quantity. You can have 10 people internally on the project, but if none of them have the right capabilities, you are still not ready. Here are the five that matter most.

1. Business process ownership. Someone on your internal team needs to be the authority on how your business actually operates. Not how it is documented. How it actually runs. The person who knows that your receiving process has 4 unofficial steps that nobody wrote down. The person who can explain why finance closes the books the way they do and what breaks if that changes. Your implementation partner will configure D365 based on what your team tells them. If your team cannot articulate the real processes, the configuration will reflect the documented ones, which are almost never the same thing at a manufacturing company.

2. Decision-making authority. ERP implementations generate hundreds of decisions. Which costing method? How many legal entities? Standard or advanced warehousing? Should catch-weight apply to these product lines? Your internal D365 ERP team needs people who can make these decisions quickly, or who have a direct line to someone who can. If every decision has to go through three layers of approval, the project stalls. If decisions get made without the right people in the room, they get made wrong. I wrote about this exact dynamic in 5 early warning signs your D365 F&O implementation is drifting.

3. Data knowledge. Someone on your team needs to understand your data landscape. Not at a theoretical level. At the “I know where the vendor master lives, I know it has 4,000 duplicate records, and I know which system is the source of truth for customer addresses” level. Data readiness is the number one project killer, and it is entirely an internal responsibility. We covered this in depth in why D365 F&O data readiness is the #1 project killer.

4. Change management credibility. You need someone who can stand in front of the warehouse team and the finance team and be believed. Not someone from corporate with a slide deck. Someone the teams trust. Someone who has been in the building long enough to understand the culture, the informal power structures, and the real reasons people resist change. External change management consultants can provide frameworks. But the best change practitioners are the ones who have actually done the job.

Many of the change management experts in the d365contractors.com community spent years working in operations, on the plant floor, or in the warehouse before they moved into consulting. When they stand in front of your warehouse team and talk about what is changing, they are not reading from a playbook. They have lived it. And your team can tell the difference.

5. Time. This is the simplest capability and the one most often missing. Your best people are your best people because they are good at their current jobs. Pulling them onto a D365 project means someone else has to do their current job for 12 to 18 months. If you have not solved the backfill problem, you do not have this capability. You have a name on an org chart and a person who is going to burn out trying to do two full-time jobs.

The D365contractors.com community exists to serve D365 ERP customers who want to beef up their internal capability and drive projects forward internally. Chat with us today about our vetted consultants who are ready to jump in and help:

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How to assess whether your internal D365 team is ready

Here is a quick exercise that takes 15 minutes and will tell you more about whether your internal D365 ERP team is ready than any formal resource plan.

Step 1: Name the person. For each of the five capabilities above, write down the name of the person who owns it. Not “Finance team” or “IT department.” A name. One person. If you cannot name someone for all five, you have a gap. This kinda information is what you need before the project starts, not information you discover in month 4 when the partner is waiting on decisions that nobody has the authority or knowledge to make.

Step 2: Check their capacity. For each name you wrote down, answer this: can that person dedicate at least 60% of their time to this project for the next 12 to 18 months? If the answer is no, you still have a gap. Having the right person at 20% capacity is almost worse than not having them at all. They will be consulted on decisions but not present for the context behind them. They will review configurations they did not help build. They will sign off on testing they did not participate in. And when something goes wrong post go-live, it’s hard (or unfair!) to hold them accountable.

Step 3: Confirm they actually know. Does each of these people know they are on the project? Not “has been told” but “has accepted the role, understands what it means, and has had their day job reallocated.” You would be surprised how often IT leaders commit people to an ERP project without ever having a direct conversation about what that commitment actually involves. “I figured they knew” is not gonna fly!

What happens when your internal ERP team has gaps nobody addressed

You’ll probably start the project with a capable team that is stretched too thin. But in the first few weeks, it works. Everyone is energized. Workshops are productive. The partner is impressed with how much your team knows about the business. Then month 2 hits. Quarter-end close pulls your finance lead off the project for two weeks. A major customer audit takes your supply chain person out for 10 days. Your warehouse supervisor’s replacement calls in sick for a week and suddenly they are back on the floor full time.

Each absence is temporary. Each one is justified. And each one creates a gap in the project that gets filled by one of two things: the partner making assumptions, or the decision getting deferred. Neither of those is good. Assumptions lead to configuration that does not match how your business works. Deferred decisions pile up and create a wall of rework in the final months of the project when you can least afford it.

By month 6, your project is technically “on track” but the internal D365 ERP team feels like they are barely keeping up. The partner is doing more of the heavy lifting than planned. Knowledge transfer is not happening because your people are not in the room consistently enough to absorb it. And you are building a growing dependency on external consultants that will be very expensive to unwind after go-live. I wrote about what this dependency looks like long term in how to build your internal D365 F&O team whilst using external consultants.

How to close the gaps in your D365 ERP team without delaying the project

Gaps in your internal D365 ERP team do not mean you should delay the project. They mean you should fill the gaps strategically before or during the early stages of the implementation.

For business process ownership gaps: Run a structured process discovery exercise internally before the partner kicks off. This does not require D365 knowledge. It requires your operations, finance, and warehouse leaders to sit down and document how things actually work. Not the process maps from 2009. How things work today, including the workarounds. Three to four weeks of focused internal workshops can give your team the foundation they need to show up to partner sessions with confidence instead of confusion.

For decision-making authority gaps: Create a decision rights matrix before the project starts. It sounds corporate, but it saves weeks of delays. For every major decision category (chart of accounts structure, costing method, warehouse configuration, integration approach), name the person who decides and the person who approves. Two names per decision. If you cannot fill in the matrix, you have found your gap. Fix it before kickoff.

For data knowledge gaps: Hire a data owner. Internal if you have someone capable. But definitely an independent contractor if you do not. This person needs to live inside your data for 60-90 days before the implementation starts and own it through go-live. It is one of the highest-ROI hires you can make on the entire project.

For change management credibility gaps: Identify your super users early. Not the most technical people. The most respected people in each department. Give them visibility into the project from month 1 and empower them to be the bridge between the project team and the rest of the organization. An engaged super user with credibility on the shop floor is worth more than any external change management consultant.

For time gaps: Backfill. There is no shortcut here. If your best people are on the D365 project, someone else has to do their jobs. Budget for it. Plan for it. Protect it. Every dollar you spend on backfill saves you three dollars in project delays, rework, and post go-live firefighting.

Building your D365 team is a leadership process, not just staffing

The manufacturing companies that run the best D365 implementations are not the ones with the biggest internal teams. They are the ones who honestly assessed what their team could handle, filled the gaps before they became problems, and protected their people’s time throughout the project.

Building an internal D365 ERP team that works is a leadership responsibility. It means having the uncomfortable conversations early about capability and budgets. It means telling your CFO that the finance lead needs to be backfilled, not split between the project and month-end close. It means telling your COO that the warehouse supervisor cannot run the warehouse and own the WMS configuration at the same time. It means budgeting for the unglamorous work of process documentation, data cleanup, and backfill hires before you spend a dollar on partner fees.

If you are about to start a D365 F&O implementation and you have not done this assessment, do it now. If you are already mid-project and recognizing some of these gaps, it is not too late to address them. But every week you wait makes the gaps harder and more expensive to close. The questions in 5 questions to answer before you talk to any D365 F&O vendor are a good place to start if you want a broader readiness check beyond just team capability.

If you are trying to figure out whether your internal team is set up for what a D365 implementation actually demands, book a free discovery call. We will talk through your situation honestly and help you figure out what kind of support would actually make a difference.

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If the gap you are closing sits on a plant floor, our guide to D365 manufacturing contractors covers the roles, modules, and timing that manufacturers hire for.

About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of d365contractors.com, connecting US manufacturing companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into manufacturing implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

 

5 Early Warning Signs Your D365 F&O Implementation Is Drifting

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

Every IT leader mid-flight on a D365 F&O implementation has the same moment. Something feels a bit wonky.

You can’t quite put your finger on it. The status reports still say green. The partner is still saying the right things. But there’s still a quiet voice internally asking: are we still on track here? That instinct is worth listening to, because D365 F&O implementation warning signs are usually stealthy before they get expensive.

Nobody walks into a steering committee and says “this project is off the rails.” Instead, it drifts. Slowly. Quietly. And by the time anyone officially acknowledges the drift, it is expensive to fix.

These are the five early D365 F&O implementation warning signs I see most often at manufacturing companies running Dynamics 365 F&O. They are not the obvious red flags. They are the subtle ones. The ones that, if you catch them now, you can still course-correct. If you miss them, they compound. And compounding project risk is just as painful as compounding interest, except nobody is getting richer.

1. Your team is making decisions without you: the first D365 F&O implementation warning sign

This one is subtle and it usually feels like efficiency. The project team is moving fast. Decisions are getting made in workshops. Configuration is progressing. Status reports look green. Everyone is happy.

Except you, the VP of IT or CIO, are finding out about decisions after they have been made. “Oh, we decided to use standard costing instead of actual costing for the new product line. The partner recommended it.” Or “We agreed to defer the intercompany invoicing automation to Phase 2. It was getting too complex.” These are not small decisions. These are architectural choices that affect your business for years. And they were made in a room you were not in.

This is one of the earliest D365 F&O implementation warning signs because it signals that the project is developing its own momentum independent of business leadership. That sounds productive. It might not be. It could mean the project team is optimizing for project delivery, not business outcomes. They are making the choices that keep the timeline on track, which is their job. But whether those choices align with what your CFO needs from month-end close, or what your plant manager needs from production scheduling, is a different question entirely.

The fix is not to slow the project down. It is to establish a clear decision framework from day one. Which decisions can the project team make autonomously? Which ones require business leadership sign-off? And how quickly can you provide that sign-off so you do not become the bottleneck? I wrote about this kind of internal ownership in detail in how to build your internal D365 F&O team.

If something feels off on your D365 F&O project and you want an honest, independent perspective: book a free 30-minute discovery call:

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2. Nobody can explain the D365 project status in plain English

Ask your ERP project manager how the project is going (hopefully you have one internally). If the answer needs explaining by a color-coded Azure DevOps dashboard & a 17-slide deck, you might have a problem.

Healthy D365 F&O projects can be explained simply. “Finance configuration is done. Supply chain is 80% complete but we are stuck on the intercompany transfer design. Warehouse is on track. Data migration is behind because the item master cleanup is taking longer than expected. We need a decision on historical data scope by Friday.” That is a real status update. It has specifics, it names problems, and it asks for what it needs.

When the status updates become increasingly abstract, when everything is “in progress” and risks are “being managed” and timelines are “under review,” that is one of the classic D365 F&O implementation warning signs. Complexity hides problems. The team may not even be doing it intentionally. Large D365 projects generate enormous volumes of information, and it is genuinely hard to distill that into a clear picture. But your job as a leader is to demand clarity. If you cannot explain the project status to your CFO in 60 seconds, something is wrong.

Ask your project team to give you the “five sentences or less” version every week. If they cannot do it, that tells you more than any ADO screen ever will.

3. Your best people keep getting pulled back to their day jobs: a D365 F&O implementation warning sign that compounds fast

You committed your strongest Finance lead, your best Supply Chain person, and your most experienced warehouse supervisor to the D365 project. Full time. Dedicated. Everyone agreed this was critical.

Then Q3 close happened and Finance needed their person back for two weeks. Then a major customer audit pulled the Supply Chain lead off the project for a month. Then the warehouse supervisor’s replacement quit, and suddenly they are splitting time between the D365 project and running the warehouse. Each time, the justification is reasonable. Each time, it is “just temporary.” And each time, the project loses momentum in ways that do not show up on the status report until weeks later.

This is one of the most damaging D365 F&O implementation warning signs because it erodes the project from the inside. Your internal team carries the business knowledge that makes the configuration work. When they are not in the room, decisions get deferred or made without the right context. Configuration gets built on assumptions instead of facts. And testing gets done by people who do not know the business well enough to catch the real problems.

The backfill problem is real, and I wrote about it in 5 questions to answer before you talk to any D365 F&O vendor. If you did not solve the backfill problem before the project started, it will absolutely bite you mid-project. And mid-project is the worst time to solve a staffing problem because now you are recruiting under pressure, training someone new on an active project, and explaining to the steering committee why things are slowing down. Fun times for any VP of IT out there.

4. Testing keeps getting pushed: the D365 F&O implementation warning sign you cannot afford to ignore

Here is how this one plays out. The project plan has a clean testing phase. Unit testing, integration testing, UAT, performance testing. All neatly scheduled. All with dedicated time blocks.

Then configuration runs a little long. A few workshops need to be repeated because the requirements changed. An integration that was supposed to be straightforward turns out to be complex. Each delay is small. Each one is explained and justified. And each one steals time from the testing phase because the go-live date does not move (yet).

This is one of the most predictable D365 F&O implementation warning signs, and yet it catches people off guard every single time. The testing phase is where your project proves it actually works: in practice, with real data volumes, real user workflows, and real edge cases. When testing gets compressed, you are transferring risk from the project phase to the go-live phase. And the go-live phase is the most expensive place to find problems.

If your testing timeline has been compressed by more than 20%, treat it as a serious D365 F&O implementation warning sign. Push back. Either the go-live date moves, or the scope reduces, or you add resources to the testing effort. The one thing you cannot do is pretend that less testing equals the same level of readiness. It does not. And your warehouse team will be the first to tell you, loudly, on day two of go-live.

5. The partner team has quietly changed: a D365 F&O implementation warning sign people feel but rarely address

You selected your implementation partner partly based on the team they proposed. The Solution Architect who impressed everyone in the sales process. The functional lead who had deep manufacturing experience. The technical lead who knew D365 integrations inside and out.

Now you are four months in and the Solution Architect has been “moved to another engagement” and replaced by someone more junior. The functional lead is splitting time between your project and another one. The technical lead is the same, thankfully, but they are stretched thin for reasons you can’t be sure of.

This is one of the D365 F&O implementation warning signs that IT leaders feel but often do not address because it feels awkward. You do not want to damage the partner relationship. You do not want to seem difficult. And the partner’s project manager assures you that the new team is “just as capable.” Maybe they are. But capability is only half the equation. The other half is context. The original team sat through your discovery workshops. They heard your CFO explain the intercompany challenges. They watched your warehouse supervisor demonstrate the batch tracking process. That context does not transfer in a handover document.

This is not about blaming your partner. Good partners sometimes need to rotate resources, and they will be upfront about it when it happens. The warning sign is when it happens quietly, when you find out through a calendar invite rather than a conversation. If your partner team has changed and nobody proactively told you why, what changed, and how continuity will be maintained, that is worth a direct conversation.

What to do when you spot these D365 F&O implementation warning signs

If you recognized one or two of these in your current project, you are not alone. The whole point of catching them early is that you still have room to act.

1. Name the problem clearly

In one sentence:

  • “Our internal team is being pulled off the project and it is affecting configuration quality.”
  • “Testing has been compressed by 6 weeks and we have not adjusted scope.”
  • “Key decisions are being made without business leadership input.”

Clear problem statements create clear conversations.

2. Have the conversation with your partner.

As a partnership: “We are seeing some things that concern us. Here is what we are noticing. How do we address this together?” Good partners will welcome this conversation. They probably see the same warning signs you do.

3. Revisit your decision framework.

Most D365 F&O implementation warning signs trace back to one of three root causes: decisions being made at the wrong level, resources being pulled without replacement, or timelines being compressed without adjusting scope. Fix the root cause and the symptoms usually resolve themselves.

4. Protect the things that matter most.

If you can only protect one thing, protect testing. If you can protect two things, protect testing and your internal team’s time. Everything else can flex. Those two things cannot, because they are the difference between a go-live that works and a go-live that technically happens but nobody trusts. I wrote about why that trust gap is so dangerous in D365 F&O change management: why user adoption fails.

Catching D365 F&O implementation warning signs is a leadership discipline

The IT leaders who run the best D365 implementations are not the ones with the biggest budgets or the most experienced partners. They are the ones who pay attention to the early signals. Who ask the uncomfortable questions in month 3 instead of month 9. Who push for clarity when status reports get vague. Who protect their people’s time even when the rest of the business is pulling them away.

These five D365 F&O implementation warning signs are not exotic. They happen on almost every large ERP project. The difference between the projects that succeed and the ones that struggle is not whether these warning signs appear. It is whether someone catches them early enough to do something about it.

If you are in the planning stages and want to make sure you are set up to catch these problems before they start, the questions in 5 questions to answer before you talk to any D365 F&O vendor will help you build the right foundation. And if you are already mid-project and nodding along to this article, take it as a sign. Not to hit the alarm. Just to have the conversation. Today. Not next week.

Independent D365 consultants are fantastic at helping customers catch these warning signs. Get connected with an impartial ERP expert today for free:

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About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of d365contractors.com, connecting US manufacturing companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 Finance & Supply Chain Management experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into manufacturing implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

D365 F&O User Adoption: Why Your Plant Floor Doesn’t Trust the System

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

My 4-year-old taught me everything I need to know about D365 F&O user adoption the other day. If the toy does not work the way the box promised, it goes in the corner. No troubleshooting. No second attempt. Just “it’s broken, Daddy” and he moves on to something he trusts.

He is 4. He is also right. That is exactly what your warehouse team does when D365 ERP does not work the way they were told it would. They do not file a ticket. They open Excel and move on. Someone configured D365 based on how manufacturing should work. Not how yours actually works. The configuration missed the reality, and now the plant floor has decided the system cannot be trusted with the real work.

This is about more than insufficient training; it is a user adoption problem rooted in trust.

D365 F&O user adoption fails when the system does not match reality

Every trust breakdown starts with a gap between what was configured and what actually happens on the floor. That gap almost always originates in discovery: wrong people in the room, wrong questions asked, or not enough time allocated. We covered this in D365 F&O discovery: where your implementation is won or lost.

The exceptions are the real process. The third-shift dock crew handling returns differently. The scheduling workaround your lead planner invented six years ago. The biggest customer changing their order every Friday afternoon. When the system cannot handle these, the people who deal with them every day stop trusting it. And once trust is gone, no amount of training brings it back. Only fixing the actual gaps will.

Need D365 expertise your internal team doesn’t have yet? Our vetted independent contractors are ready to jump in. Let’s talk:

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The Monday 6am test

This exercise will tell you more about D365 F&O user adoption at your plant than any survey ever could. Have your production supervisor walk through a full day using the D365 process. Monday, 6am to last shipment. Not the happy path. Every exception. Every “oh, we always do it this way.”

  • Shadow the morning. Does the D365 production schedule match what actually gets run first? At most manufacturers, the first run of the day is already an adjustment. A machine went down. A delivery was short. A rush order came in. If the system cannot accommodate this cleanly, your planner is already working outside of it before 7am.
  • Follow the exceptions. A material substitution. A partial receipt. A production order that needs splitting because half the batch failed quality. These are not rare events. They are daily life. Every one the system cannot handle is a moment where trust erodes.
  • Watch the last shipment. By end of day, how much was captured accurately in D365? If your warehouse lead spends 30 minutes reconciling adjustments, the system is reflecting the plan, not reality. And at a manufacturer, those two have usually parted ways by mid-afternoon.

If the system cannot handle the exceptions, the design is not done.

Where D365 F&O user adoption (usually) breaks down at manufacturers

Trust breaks in the same four places at nearly every manufacturer:

  • Receiving. Delivery does not match the PO. D365 cannot process it as it actually arrived. “I’ll fix it in the system later” is where trust starts dying.
  • Production scheduling. The D365 schedule rarely survives contact with the plant floor. If adjusting it in real time is difficult, your planner stops using it for scheduling and uses it only for reporting. You paid for an ERP. You are getting a very expensive filing cabinet.
  • Month-end close. Workarounds upstream mean inaccurate production transactions. Finance inherits the mess, builds reconciliation spreadsheets, and adds days to the close.
  • Reporting. Leadership pulls a report. Plant manager says “those numbers are not right.” Once executives stop trusting the data, the entire ROI case is at risk.

How to rebuild trust and fix the adoption problem

Most companies try to fix D365 F&O user adoption with more training. More lunch-and-learns. More posters in the break room. None of that works when the root cause is a configuration that does not match how the plant operates. You cannot train someone into trusting a system that does not support their job.

  • Fix the configuration, not the people. Most trust gaps are configuration adjustments, not architectural problems. A senior functional D365 ERP consultant who knows Quality OR Advanced Warehousing can identify the changes needed in 2-4 weeks. We covered how this works in how to build your internal D365 F&O team while using external experts.
  • Start with the most visible pain. Run the Monday 6am test. Document every workaround. Fix the one that costs the most time first. One fixed problem is worth more than ten training sessions.
  • Involve the floor in the fix. The people who built the workarounds understand the gaps best. When they are part of designing the fix, they own it. That is how adoption actually works. Bottom-up trust recovery, one process at a time.

If you are past go-live and seeing workarounds multiply, the roadmap in D365 F&O post go-live optimization will help you structure the effort.

D365 F&O user adoption is a trust problem, and trust is earned on the plant floor

Your steering committee can declare the implementation a success. Your dashboard can show green. None of that matters if the people who run your operation do not trust the system. Trust is built one fixed gap at a time. When the receiving team sees that D365 handles deliveries the way they actually arrive. When the planner adjusts the schedule without calling IT. When finance closes the month without a reconciliation spreadsheet. When the COO pulls a report and the plant manager nods instead of wincing.

No ERP earns trust by being powerful. It earns trust by being accurate. And accuracy starts with a configuration that reflects how your plant actually operates, exceptions and all.

If your plant floor is running workarounds and D365 F&O user adoption is not where it needs to be, book a free discovery call. We will connect you with a community member who can talk through where the trust gaps are and what kind of targeted support would actually fix them:

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About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of D365contractors.com, connecting US manufacturing companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 Finance & Supply Chain Management experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into manufacturing implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

 

Why Generic D365 F&O Configuration Fails Food Manufacturers

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

D365 F&O food manufacturing implementations fail more often than they should. Not because the platform cannot handle it. Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management has deep, native capabilities for process manufacturing, batch management, catch weight, formula management, and lot traceability. The platform can absolutely do this. The problem is that most configurations are built by people who learned D365 in discrete manufacturing environments, then try to apply the same approach to a food plant. And food manufacturing is a completely different animal. Sometimes literally!

A configuration that works perfectly for a company making metal brackets will quietly fail a company making frozen pizza. Not in a dramatic, system-down way. In the slow, expensive way where your warehouse team is doing manual adjustments on every receipt, your quality team is tracking allergens in a spreadsheet, and your production planners cannot scale a recipe without creating a new BOM every time.

This blog is for the IT leader at a food or beverage manufacturer who is either about to start a D365 F&O implementation or is mid-project and starting to notice the expensive ERP might not quite fit how their plant actually operates.

The D365contractors.com community exists to serve D365 ERP customers who want to beef up their internal capability and drive projects forward internally. Chat with us today about our vetted consultants who are ready to jump in and help:

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Why D365 F&O food manufacturing is fundamentally different

Just to state the obvious first. Discrete manufacturing is relatively predictable. You put in 4 parts, you get 1 product. The bill of materials is fixed. The yield is consistent. The product does not expire next Tuesday.

D365 F&O food manufacturing does not work that way. You put in ingredients that vary by season, supplier, and moisture content. Your yield changes based on temperature, humidity, and how long the batch sat before processing. You produce co-products and by-products that have their own value, their own inventory, and their own compliance requirements. Your product has a shelf life measured in days or weeks, not years. And if something goes wrong, you need to trace every ingredient back to the supplier lot within hours.

The core difference is variability. Discrete manufacturing optimizes for consistency. Food manufacturing manages variability. And if you are growing, harvesting, or packing fresh produce, the variability goes up another level. Your inventory is literally alive. Shelf life is measured in days. Grading and quality classification happen at intake and can change the value of your inventory in real time. A shipment of strawberries graded as premium Tuesday morning might be reclassified by Thursday. Your packing configurations change based on customer requirements, seasonal availability, and what the field actually produced that day.

D365 has the tools to handle all of this beautifully, if they are configured by someone who understands what variability looks like on a food production floor. If they are configured by someone who learned D365 in a discrete environment, you get a system that expects consistency and breaks every time reality does not cooperate.

The 5 areas where generic D365 configuration breaks food manufacturers

These are the five areas where I see the most pain at food and beverage companies running D365. They are all areas where the platform has strong native capabilities for D365 F&O food manufacturing, but where generic configuration misses the mark.

1. Receiving and catch weight. In food manufacturing, you rarely receive exactly what you ordered. You order 10,000 lbs of chicken breast and you receive 9,847 lbs because that is what the truck weighed. You order 500 cases of tomato paste and the actual weight per case varies by 3-5%. Catch weight handling in D365 allows you to manage inventory in dual units of measure (cases and pounds, for example) and reconcile the difference. But if catch weight is not configured correctly, or if it is skipped entirely because the consultant was not familiar with it, your receiving team is manually adjusting every single receipt. That is hours of labor per week and a growing inventory accuracy problem.

2. Production and formula management. A bill of materials in discrete manufacturing is fixed. A formula in food manufacturing is not. Recipe scaling, ingredient substitution, potency-based calculations, co-products and by-products, batch balancing. These are all native D365 capabilities within the process manufacturing module. But if your implementation was configured using standard BOMs instead of formulas, you lose all of that flexibility. Your production team ends up creating a new BOM for every batch size variation, which is as tedious as it sounds and about as error-prone as you would expect.

3. Inventory management and shelf life. Food products expire. Ingredients expire. This sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how many D365 configurations at food companies do not have shelf life tracking properly implemented. Best-before dates, FEFO (first expired, first out) picking strategies, shelf life advice periods for customers, quarantine rules for incoming materials. All of this exists natively in D365. If your warehouse is running FIFO instead of FEFO because nobody configured the shelf life parameters, you are shipping older product when you should be shipping product that expires sooner. Your customers will notice. Your quality team will notice. Your waste numbers will definitely notice. For fresh produce companies, this is even more critical. A pallet of leafy greens with a 5-day shelf life sitting behind a pallet with a 3-day shelf life because the system is not picking by expiration date means product going to waste that should have shipped first. Multiply that across hundreds of SKUs and dozens of shipments per day and the financial impact adds up fast.

4. Costing and yield variability. In food manufacturing, your costs fluctuate with commodity prices, seasonal availability, and yield variability. A batch that should produce 5,000 units might produce 4,700 due to moisture loss or processing waste. If your costing configuration does not account for variable yield, co-product cost allocation, and by-product value, your CFO is looking at product profitability numbers that do not reflect reality. Making pricing and sourcing decisions based on inaccurate cost data is a fast way to erode margin without knowing it.

5. Compliance and traceability. Food safety regulations require full lot traceability from supplier to customer. If there is a recall, you need to identify every lot of every ingredient in the affected batch and every customer who received product from that batch. In minutes, not days. D365 has robust batch tracking and traceability capabilities, but they need to be configured with your specific compliance requirements in mind, whether that is FDA, FSMA, GFSI, or customer-specific audit requirements. A generic traceability setup will leave gaps that your quality team discovers during an audit. And audit day is a bad day to discover configuration gaps.

Why this happens even with good implementation partners

This is not a partner quality problem. It is a specialization problem. Most D365 implementation partners have deep experience in discrete manufacturing and they are very good at it. But D365 F&O food manufacturing is a different specialization. Process manufacturing, formula management, catch weight, allergen tracking, shelf life management, compliance traceability. These are not things you pick up by reading the Microsoft documentation over a weekend. D365 F&O food manufacturing configuration demands someone who has lived through the complexity of catch weight variances, yield fluctuations, and recall exercises in a real plant. A consultant who has done 15 discrete manufacturing implementations and zero food manufacturing implementations is not a bad consultant. They are a great consultant in the wrong context.

The talent pool for D365 consultants with genuine food and beverage experience is small. A VP at a major coffee company put it well: “There are not many true F&B experts. It is a small world with D365 specifically.” This means your implementation partner may not have food-specific expertise on their bench when your project needs it. Not because they are cutting corners. Because the people simply are not available through traditional staffing channels. We wrote about this talent dynamic in detail in our guide to hiring D365 F&O food and beverage consultants.

What food manufacturers should do differently with D365 F&O food manufacturing configuration

The good news is that every one of these configuration gaps is preventable. The platform handles food manufacturing well. The key is making sure the people configuring it have the right experience and the right information.

Demand food-specific experience during partner selection. Ask how many food or beverage manufacturers they have implemented D365 for. Ask which consultants on their proposed team have hands-on experience with catch weight, formula management, and process manufacturing. Generic manufacturing experience is not enough for D365 F&O food manufacturing. The questions in 5 questions to answer before you talk to any D365 F&O vendor will help you structure these conversations.

Bring in food-specific expertise where your partner has gaps. If your partner is strong on finance and general supply chain but light on process manufacturing, that is not a reason to switch partners. It is a reason to supplement with an independent contractor who has deep D365 food manufacturing experience for the specific modules that require it. Catch weight configuration. Formula management. Shelf life and traceability design. That is exactly the kind of targeted support the d365contractors.com community is built for.

Run discovery with your plant operations people in the room. The warehouse manager who deals with catch weight every day. The quality manager who runs mock recalls. The production planner who adjusts recipes based on ingredient potency. Not just the VP who oversees them from an office two buildings away. We covered this in depth in D365 F&O discovery: where your implementation is won or lost.

Test with real food manufacturing scenarios. Your UAT should include a full batch production run with variable yield, a catch weight receipt with actual weight variances, a mock recall tracing ingredients back to supplier lots, and a shelf life scenario where product approaching expiration needs rerouting. If your test scripts do not cover these, you will discover the gaps in production. And production is the most expensive testing environment you have.

Getting D365 F&O food manufacturing right is a preparation problem

The food manufacturers who get the best results from D365 are the ones who recognize early that their implementation requires food-specific expertise, food-specific discovery, and food-specific testing. They do not assume that a standard manufacturing configuration will work. If you are about to start a D365 implementation at a food or beverage company, assess whether your project team has the food manufacturing expertise to configure the areas that matter most. If you are already mid-implementation and starting to see configuration that does not match how your plant operates, it is not too late to bring in targeted expertise. But the longer you wait, the more rework accumulates.

D365 F&O is an outstanding platform for food manufacturing. It just needs to be configured by people who understand food manufacturing. And in this niche, those people are worth their weight in catch weight.

If you are a food or beverage manufacturer heading into a D365 implementation, or mid-project and seeing configuration gaps in process manufacturing, catch weight, or traceability, book a free discovery call to learn more about our community of independent D365 consultants:

BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of d365contractors.com, connecting US manufacturing companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 Finance & Supply Chain Management experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into manufacturing implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

D365 F&O Post Go-Live Optimization: The Roadmap Nobody Builds

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

D365 F&O post go-live optimization is the phase of every ERP project that the business needs most yet nobody plans for. Not really.

The implementation is done. Go-live happened. Money was spent. Boy was it spent. Now, stabilization is mostly behind you. The fires are out, or at least manageable. Your team is exhausted. Hopefully some got a vacation. Your partner has rolled off. And somewhere in a boardroom, your CFO is looking at the business case you presented 18 months ago and wondering when the ROI starts showing up.

This is the moment most manufacturing companies stall. Not because the system failed. Because nobody planned for what comes after stabilization. The project team disbanded. The implementation budget is spent. The internal team that carried the project went back to their day jobs. And D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management sits there, running your business at maybe 60-70% of its potential, with a long list of deferred items that nobody has a plan (or budget to deliver).

This blog is an outline for that plan. A practical D365 F&O post go-live optimization roadmap for the months after stabilization, built for manufacturing companies who want to move from “the system works” to “the system is actually delivering the value we promised”.

Why D365 F&O post go-live optimization never gets off the ground

It is not laziness. It is exhaustion combined with a structural gap in how ERP projects are planned.

The implementation partner’s SOW typically covers everything through go-live and maybe 90 days of post go-live support. After that, the engagement ends or transitions to a managed services contract that is mostly reactive: you raise a ticket, they fix a thing. That is support (treading water). It is not optimization (swimming forward). There is a massive difference.

Internally, the project team was assembled for the implementation. They had a charter, a timeline, and a budget. All three of those things expired at go-live. Nobody chartered an optimization team. Nobody created an optimization budget. Nobody defined what optimization even means. So the deferred items list becomes a graveyard of good ideas that never get resourced. I covered the financial dynamics of this period in detail in why the first 6 months after D365 F&O go-live define your ROI.

D365 F&O post go-live optimization needs the same discipline the implementation had: defined phases, clear owners, measurable outcomes, and a budget.

Our D365contractors.com community exists to serve D365 ERP customers who want to beef up their internal capability and drive projects forward internally. Chat with us about the vetted independent consultants who are ready to jump in and help:

BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

How to build a D365 F&O optimization backlog that actually gets funded

Before you optimize anything, you need to know what you are working with. Not what the status reports said. What the users actually experience every day.

Walk the floor with your end users. A structured walkthrough of the core processes in D365 with the people who actually use them. Month-end close with your finance team. A full receiving and putaway cycle with your warehouse team. A production run from sales order to finished goods with your planners. Ask one question at each step: does this work the way you need it to, or are you working around it? Document every workaround. Every manual step that could be automated. Every report that does not show what they need. Every process that takes longer than it should. This is your optimization backlog: and it could unlock millions of dollars for your business.

Assess your deferred items list honestly. Pull out the list of deferred items from the implementation. Some of them will still be relevant. Some will have been solved by workarounds that are now embedded in the business. Some were never important, they just felt important during implementation when everything felt urgent. Prioritize ruthlessly. What delivers measurable business value? What reduces manual effort? What improves data quality? Everything else can wait.

Frame everything in ROI language. “We need to optimize our warehouse configuration” does not get budget approved. “We can reduce pick time by 30% and eliminate 12 hours of manual rework per week by adjusting our WMS setup” does. Every item on your D365 F&O post go-live optimization backlog needs a business case, even if it is one sentence. That is the difference between a wish list and a funded roadmap.

The three types of optimization work in D365 F&O

Not all optimization work is the same. Understanding the three types helps you sequence the work, set expectations, and resource it correctly.

Quick wins (1-2 weeks each). These are the things that take minimal effort and immediately make someone’s life easier. Reports that need adjusting because the data is there but the layout does not match how the team uses it. Workflow approvals that have too many steps or not enough. Security roles that are too restrictive or too loose. Warehouse processes with one or two unnecessary steps that add minutes to every transaction, which adds up to hours every week across a team. Start here. Always.

Capability buildouts (4-8 weeks each). These are the features and configurations that were deferred at go-live because the team was not ready or the timeline did not allow it. Advanced warehouse management features. Planning optimization that connects demand forecasting to production scheduling. Catch-weight configurations for specific product lines. Each of these is a mini-project with a defined scope, timeline, and business case.

Strategic investments (8-16 weeks each). These are the larger pieces of work that transform how the business operates. Power BI dashboards that turn D365 data into operational intelligence. Integrations with external systems that eliminate manual data entry. Automation of processes that are still partially manual. These need proper resourcing and executive sponsorship, but they are where the biggest ROI lives.

Quick wins build trust and momentum. Capability buildouts close functional gaps. Strategic investments deliver the transformation your board was promised. You need all three, sequenced in that order.

What does not belong in your D365 F&O post go-live plan

Not everything deferred from Phase 1 deserves a second chance. This is the part most IT leaders skip because it feels easier to keep everything on the list than to have the conversation about what gets cut.

Remove items that have been solved by workarounds that are now embedded in the business. If your finance team built an Excel-based reconciliation process during stabilization and it works reliably, the cost of replacing it with an in-system solution may not be justified. That does not mean you accept every workaround permanently. It means you assess each one honestly: is the workaround costing us time and risk, or is it actually fine?

Remove items that were scope creep parked as “Phase 2.” Every implementation has these. Someone in a workshop said “wouldn’t it be nice if…” and it got written on the deferred list to avoid a difficult conversation. If it was not important enough to fight for during implementation, it is probably not important enough to fund now.

Remove items where the business need has changed. Your business is not the same company it was when the implementation started. Markets shift. Product lines change. Acquisitions happen. Some deferred items were designed for a version of the business that no longer exists. Let them go.

Pruning the list is just as important as building it. A focused D365 F&O post go-live optimization plan with 15 prioritized items will deliver more value than a sprawling list of 60 that overwhelms everyone and gets nothing done.

How to resource internally without rebuilding the project team

You do not need to reassemble the full implementation team. You do not need a massive partner engagement. What you need is targeted expertise for defined pieces of work.

Quick wins can usually be handled by your internal team if they have the capacity and the confidence. If they do not, a short-term contractor can knock out a backlog of quick wins in 2-4 weeks and transfer the knowledge to your team in the process. We covered how to think about this right here: how to build your internal D365 F&O team while using external experts.

Capability buildouts are where independent contractors shine. Examples of this could be:

  • A senior Advanced WMS expert for 4 weeks to implement advanced warehouse features
  • A finance functional expert for 3 weeks to optimize your costing configuration.
  • A Power BI contractor for 6 weeks to build the dashboards your CFO has been asking for.

Each engagement has a defined scope, a defined timeline, and a defined handover. No open-ended partner retainer. Work with independent consultants (like D365contractors.com) in this way, and you get the right person to help without any bloat.

Strategic investments may require a small team, but still not a full implementation partner. A solution architect to design the integration, a developer to build it, and your internal team to own it going forward. The key is that every engagement has a clear end state: your team can operate and maintain whatever gets built. And if you are wondering whether your internal team has the capability to own projects like this, the assessment in build an internal D365 ERP team for your implementation might be helpful.

Post go-live optimization is a leadership commitment

The IT leaders who get the most value from D365 are the ones who treat the post go-live period with the same rigor they treated the implementation. They charter a team. They allocate a budget. They define outcomes. They build a roadmap and they hold people accountable for delivering it.

If you are sitting at month 6 or month 9 after go-live and you do not have a D365 F&O post go-live optimization roadmap, start one this week:

  • Pull together your internal team, your key business stakeholders,
  • Collecting those mental list of “things that should be better.”
  • Turn that list into a prioritized backlog.
  • Identify the quick wins.
  • Define the capability buildouts.
  • Scope the strategic investments.
  • Put timelines and owners on each one.

It does not need to be a 50-page document. A one-page roadmap with three phases, clear priorities, and named owners is more valuable than a detailed plan that nobody executes. The goal is not perfection. The goal is momentum. Because the longer D365 sits at 60-70% of its potential, the harder it is to close the gap, and the more likely your users are to permanently settle into the workarounds they built during stabilization.

Incremental beats a big-bang “Phase 2” that never gets funded. Start small. Start now. Pick the three processes that waste the most time every week. Fix the one with the biggest time saving first. Then the next. That is D365 F&O post go-live optimization in practice. And it is how you deliver the ROI your board is still waiting for.

About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of d365contractors.com, connecting US manufacturing companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 Finance & Supply Chain Management experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into manufacturing implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →

 

D365 F&O Discovery: Where Your Implementation Is Won or Lost

Posted on by Ryan Carolan

Your partner might call it the design phase, the requirements gathering phase, or the fit-gap analysis. Whatever the label, it is the same thing: the foundation everything else gets built on. D365 F&O discovery is where your implementation is won or lost.

This is the phase where you, as an IT leader, truly learn how the business really works. Where the warehouse manager explains the undocumented workaround they have used for 8 years. Where Finance admits the consolidation process runs on VLOOKUPs.

This blog is for the IT leader who is about to enter the discovery phase, or who is already in it and sensing something is not quite right. It is written from your side of the table, not the partner’s. Because while your partner runs the workshops, you own the outcome. And at a manufacturing company moving towards a sophisticated ERP platform, the outcome depends entirely on what happens in those early weeks.

Why D365 F&O discovery matters more than any other phase

Everything downstream is built on what comes out of discovery. Your partner builds configurations based on what they learn in these workshops. Test scripts get written against the processes documented here. And the training materials reflect the design decisions made in this phase. If it captures a sanitized, theoretical version of how your business is supposed to operate, every phase that follows inherits that gap.

At manufacturing companies, this gap is enormous. The distance between documented processes and reality is wider in manufacturing than in almost any other industry. Your warehouse team has been running a modified receiving process for years that nobody in IT knows about. Meanwhile, production planners have a sequencing logic that lives in someone’s head, not in any system. And the finance team has month-end close steps that were invented to work around the limitations of your legacy ERP and have been running on muscle memory ever since.

If your partner does not capture these realities during D365 F&O discovery, they will configure D365 based on the theoretical version. And you will spend UAT discovering that the system does not match how your business works. UAT is an expensive place to discover design flaws. Discovery is a cheap place to prevent them.

Our D365contractors.com community exists to serve D365 ERP customers who want to beef up their internal capability and drive projects forward independently. Chat with us today about the independent consultants who are ready to jump in and help you: BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

The one rule: the people who do the work must be in the room

If you take one thing from this blog, let it be this. Put the person running the warehouse in the workshop, not the VP who oversees it. The AP clerk, not the Controller. Your planner on the floor, not the Supply Chain Director. Leadership knows what the process should look like. The people on the floor know what it actually looks like. And it is the actual version that your D365 system needs to support.

Most manufacturing companies get this wrong. They send leadership because those are the people with availability. But leadership has not touched the day-to-day process in years. Nobody told them about the workaround in the receiving dock, or that the production schedule gets manually adjusted every Tuesday afternoon, or that AP bypasses the standard workflow for half their invoices.

Your partner will configure D365 based on what the people in the room tell them. Wrong people, wrong configuration. Not maliciously. Just incomplete.

What good D365 F&O discovery actually looks like

Good D365 F&O discovery at a manufacturing company has a few consistent characteristics regardless of which partner you are working with or which methodology they follow.

It starts with your processes, not the system. The partner should be asking “how does this work today” before they show you how D365 handles it. If the first workshop starts with a D365 demo, that is a red flag. Discovery is about understanding your business. The system comes later. A good partner listens first, then maps what they heard to D365 capabilities, then identifies the gaps.

It documents the exceptions, not just the happy path. Every process has a standard flow and a dozen exceptions. At a manufacturing company, the exceptions are where the real complexity lives. What happens when a supplier ships the wrong quantity? When a production order needs to be split mid-run? When a customer returns product that has already been partially consumed? The standard flow is easy. The exceptions are what break implementations.

It captures the workarounds. Every legacy system has them. Your team has been compensating for system limitations for years. Some of those workarounds are brilliant and should be preserved. Some are unnecessary and can be eliminated by D365’s native capabilities. But you cannot make that decision unless you know the workarounds exist. Good discovery surfaces them deliberately, not accidentally during UAT.

It takes the right amount of time. For a mid-size manufacturer implementing D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, decent discovery could take 4 to 10 weeks, depending on complexity. If your partner has allocated 2 weeks, they are planning to cut corners. The right duration depends on how many modules you are implementing, how many sites you are rolling out, and how complex your operations are. But 2 weeks is almost never enough for a manufacturing company.

How to spot a discovery process that is being rushed

It does not always feel like rushing. Sometimes it feels like efficiency. Here are the signs:

  1. Your partner is running workshops with pre-built agendas that leave no room for tangents. In discovery, the tangents are the most valuable part. The tangent is where the warehouse manager says “actually, we do not do it that way” and the real process gets captured. A rigid agenda that moves through topics on a timer is optimized for the partner’s schedule, not your business’s complexity.
  2. The partner is leading with D365 demos instead of questions. If they are showing you how D365 handles accounts payable before they understand how you handle accounts payable, they are fitting your business to the system instead of the other way around. There is a time for demos. It is after they understand your processes, not before.
  3. Only leadership is in the workshops. If the partner has not asked to speak with the operational users, or if they accepted a room full of directors without pushing back, they are not going deep enough. A good partner will specifically request time with the people who do the work. If they did not ask, they are either too polite or too inexperienced. Either way, the result is the same: incomplete requirements.
  4. The fit-gap analysis is mostly “fit.” If your requirements gathering shows that D365 handles 95% of your needs out of the box, either you have a very standard business or the discovery was not thorough enough. At a manufacturing company with any real complexity, there should be meaningful gaps to address. A fit-gap that is almost entirely fit is usually a sign that the right questions were not asked.

I wrote about what this dynamic looks like when it compounds in 5 early warning signs your D365 F&O implementation is drifting.

How to prepare your internal team for D365 F&O discovery

The quality of discovery depends as much on your preparation as it does on your partner’s methodology. Here is how to set your team up to get the most out of this phase.

Document your real processes before the partner arrives. Not the process maps from 2019. How things actually work today, including the workarounds, the exceptions, and the unofficial steps. This does not need to be formal. A simple walkthrough written by the person who does the job is more valuable than a polished Visio diagram that nobody recognizes.

Identify the people who know the workarounds and protect their time. These are usually your most experienced operational people. They are also your busiest. If you do not carve out their time for discovery workshops, they will not be there, and the workarounds will not get captured until UAT when it is expensive to fix. Talk to their managers. Get coverage for their day jobs. This is a leadership responsibility. We covered how to assess whether your team is set up for this in build an internal D365 ERP team for your implementation.

Give your team permission to be honest. This sounds simple but it matters. In a room with their VP, the partner, and the project manager, your AP clerk is not going to volunteer that they bypass the standard process for half their invoices unless they feel safe doing so. Create the environment where honesty is expected, not punished. The best discovery workshops are the ones where someone says “I know this is not how we are supposed to do it, but here is what actually happens.” That is gold. Protect it.

Brief your team on what discovery is and why it matters. Most operational users have never been through an ERP implementation. They do not know what a fit-gap analysis is. They do not know why the partner is asking them to describe their daily workflow in granular detail. A 30-minute briefing that explains “this is how we make sure the new system works for you” goes a long way toward getting engaged, honest participation.

Discovery is YOUR responsibility

Your partner runs the workshops. But you own the outcome. Wrong people in the room? Your problem. Undocumented processes? Your gap. Team holding back because honesty feels risky? Your culture to fix.

The IT leaders who get the best results treat discovery as active leadership. They sit in the workshops. They check whether the partner captured what was actually said. They push back when complexity gets skipped over.

If something feels off, trust that instinct. Discovery is the cheapest place to get things right. Every other phase is a more expensive place to fix what was missed.

The questions in 5 questions to answer before you talk to any D365 F&O vendor can help you assess whether your organization is prepared.

If you are heading into D365 F&O discovery and want to make sure your internal team is prepared, or if you are mid-project and sensing gaps, let’s talk about independent consultants at D365contractors.com:

BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

About the Author

Ryan Carolan is the founder of d365contractors.com, connecting US manufacturing companies with pre-vetted, independent D365 Finance & Supply Chain Management experts. 14 years exclusively in D365 staffing. Hundreds of contractor placements into manufacturing implementations across the US.

Most weeks, he waffles on about stuff like this online.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn →