About customer

The cooperation between Awara IT and the wholesale exporter D42 has been ongoing for more than a year. During this time, the customer's challenges have evolved based on business needs, and we have provided appropriate solutions using various technologies from the Microsoft stack. This partnership has developed through two key stages:

1) The successful rapid implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations for over 50 employees established a strong foundation for cooperation and technological advancement.

2) We optimized internal and external document workflows using Power Platform and Power Pages, including document approval routes integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, and the supplier's personal account.

This post unfolds the first stage. You can find details about the second stage here.

About customer and project

¨D42 trading¨ is a leading trader of Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) primarily in Eastern Europe and the Middle East regions. The company organizes wholesale export and delivery of key food and consumer good staples from across the World. 

¨D42 trading¨ positions its team as the one of dedicated professionals provide comprehensive solutions to their clients, including product sourcing, logistics, customs clearance and overall trade strategy implementation and support. With an established presence and offices in over 5 countries and a global network of partners and counterparties, the Company provides services of the highest possible standard with dedicated care and attention to the needs of their customers.  

The focused scope of FMCG the Company works with is: fruit and vegetables, meat and meat products, eggs and dairy, vegetable and olive oils, fruit juices and fruit drinks, sugar, chocolate, coffee, tea, cocoa, spices, fish and fish products. 

Key Import Destinations: Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan 

Key Export Countries: Chile, China, India, Ecuador, Peru, Turkey, UAE.

Starting point

At the beginning of the project, D42 was a genuine startup operating in several countries with ambitious geo-expansion plans. There was no existing IT system in place, so solutions had to be developed literally from scratch.

Key objectives

There was “the mission impossible” set for the Customer’s project team to choose an implementation Partner and deploy D365 FO for the 1st project phase max within 6 weeks. The urgency was pushed by the investors who wanted the opening business to start operating based on a World-leading ERP system. The main challenge was to find a Partner with the relevant level of expertise and enough capacity and courage to take commitment to implement the 1 stage functionality within 4 weeks. The solution assessment stage was also needed to interview all stakeholders and offer the best-relevant implementation scenario. 

Challenges and solutions

Solution assessment

Solution assessment was done to interview all stakeholders to offer the best-relevant implementation scenario and was carried out in a 1:1 format for the better Customer experience. Within the assessment, there was a set of users identified and interviewed that are critical for: 

• Identification of the problem areas and pain points in use cases, create strategic alignment and define actionable roadmaps, 

• Engagement in the deployment and implementation of the solution to ensure the continuity of interaction, communication, security and interaction control, enable and optimize workloads to ensure remote work and business continuity,  

• Further assessment of functionality of custom applications, process automation tools and the integration of third-party and business applications. 

Assessment of Release 1.1 of the projects: 

• functionality: contracting, Invoicing, payments 

• Timeline: urgent need to launch Release 1.1 (start in a week, launch in 5 weeks) 

• 30 users in 2 locations OAE & Turkey 

• Technological implementation: cloud, minimal customization 

• Further stages/ full scope of the project: logistics, finances (localization needed), HR  

• Locations of the business for system roll-out: AE, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, some others  

• Number of users planned for rolled-out system – several hundreds 

• Release 1.1 estimation to be provided – in a 3 day-time frame (costs estimation and team) 

Technologies 

We implemented the core components of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations to automate contracting, invoicing, and payments. This foundational setup will be extended with new functionalities and additional users in the future.

Implementation

The project was completed in six weeks, including one week for assessment, four weeks for development and one week for implementation and training in 2 locations (OAE & Turkey). The development was carried out remotely, while the rollout in the production environment and training were conducted at the customer's office. Data migration was not required, simplifying the task slightly. However, the tight deadlines for building an ERP system demanded the involvement of highly qualified employees with advanced skills in system architecture and configuration. Fortunately, Awara IT has such specialists on staff.

Results

Project results

The whole scope of the 1st implementation phase was successfully deployed and launched, Users educated and started working in D365 F&O. 

The implementation caused the following positive business impact:  

• Ready to use automated business processes scope of contracting, invoicing, payments that let the Company start working with its counteragents, suppliers and Customers, 

• ROI with just as little as 1 month,  

• Reputation of the Company as the trusted Partner with mature business processes although it´s a brand-new start-up, thus really appealing for new Suppliers and Customers 

• Ability to expand intensively to the planned new locations in a cost-effective manner by seamless extension of D365 F&O to new entities and users. 

Next steps

The customer decided to expand the scope of technologies by incorporating Power Platform Workload for document flow automation, thanks to the customer-centric approach of the Awara IT project team. This project was successfully implemented in 2024. Streamlining document management has resulted in significant cost savings by reducing manual processes and minimizing errors. 

‘We decided to automate all business processes using Dynamics 365 F&O and required operations to start in a short time. Awara IT's expertise enabled us to achieve quick wins, including rapid implementation and subsequent immediate return on investment in less than a month. The first stage, automating contracting, invoicing, and payments, was successfully implemented within four weeks! The project is now expanding to include new functionalities and additional users.’ – Anna Perttunen Project program manager D42 trading.

Awara IT is a company with the Customer centric culture. We believe that Microsoft technologies can help Customers to be successful and efficient as any need or pain-point can be addressed with Microsoft platform. Business Applications is in the core of our business, still to believe that only comprehensive approach and expertise in the whole Microsoft technological stack can discover the full potential of Dynamics technological family. So we are experts in Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Azure with MVPs on board. We work closely with Microsoft PDMs & cloud architects that really help us to adopt all opportunities the Microsoft offers to the Partner Ecosystem. Consuming a sandwich-like infrastructure where data is the basis, Azure, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform comes on top becomes not just theory but reality.

Only this comprehensive approach allows us to take such challenges and meet our commitments with the Customers with high level of proficiency.