Growing Dynamics 365 functionality is key for SiteOne’s green business

Outdated infrastructure was an obstacle to growth

In the past, SiteOne trusted Dynamics AX, a leading enterprise resource planning solution at the time, to manage its multi-national business processes. The 2017 integration of Flintfox Trade Revenue Management (TRM) and its powerful RMx intelligent pricing engine allowed SiteOne to launch its e-commerce sales operations and improve the performance of its legacy point of sale solution.

Although the new, innovative pricing capabilities were a great improvement, TRM was just one of 19 third-party integrations with Dynamics AX. Running the business on an outdated platform opened the company up to security risks and incompatibility issues. It also incurred expensive maintenance costs and required exhaustive technical support to keep the system up to date and running smoothly. 

As the business grew, so did the need for a more modern, agile, and integrated platform to provide data transparency, real-time supply chain management, simplified banking and exemplary service. Although the company had had a good run with Dynamics AX, it wasn’t the optimal path to take SiteOne into the future. 

Along with modernizing its platform and expanding functionality, SiteOne recognized the need to gain better access to reporting tools to accommodate more robust in-store and online business—particularly around specialized pricing models, full-cycle finance processes, inventory management, and accounts payable. The company’s experience with third-party integration and a better-connected platform made the decision to upgrade from Dynamics AX to Dynamics 365 a comfortable one.

Gains from past upgrades plant the seed for more innovation

Building on its success with Dynamics AX, SiteOne developed a comprehensive plan to modernize its technology infrastructure and enhance sales, finance, and supply chain functionality. The goal was to migrate to a 100% cloud-based platform with built-in security controls, banking capabilities, seamless accounts payable tools, reliable financial reporting, and real-time pricing model generation, all delivered in a user-friendly package. SiteOne intended to streamline business processes—particularly the month-end close, invoicing, and payment systems—while avoiding business disruption and data loss.

"With Dynamics 365, our teams can set up customer pricing, create purchase invoices, process payments, and view current financial reports—all in one easy system," said Anna Kupchenko, SiteOne's Senior Director of IT Business Applications—Finance.

Best practices and tooling from Microsoft FastTrack boosted confidence in architectural and implementation choices and validated data migration methodology, allowing SiteOne to preserve seven years of account and transactional data, eliminating the need to maintain a backup copy of the previous accounting system. High volumes of customer, inventory, and financial information were migrated into Dynamics 365 to retain full historical data and all within a manageable downtime window. Dynamics 365 is allowing SiteOne to be more agile and significantly optimize its business processes.

"I have been a part of several ERP upgrades over my career, and I have to say this is the smoothest I have experienced," said Jeff Paruszkiewicz, SiteOne's Director of Shared Services. "The Shared Services team experienced no major issues in processing invoices or issuing payments and has experienced a marked improvement in performance following the migration to Dynamics 365."

Today, finance, accounting, business operations, sales, and inventory staff are sharing current information through fast and accurate data access. With Flintfox TRM’s sales attribute-based pricing engine, complex pricing models can now shift using account relationship data to make custom accounting operations automatic, traceable, and simple. Reporting inventory levels for more than 150,000 product SKUs, previously a 12-hour job, is now complete in a fraction of the time, thanks to built-in inventory tracking, which continuously calculates product movement and available inventory.

SiteOne’s accounting team was delighted to continue its regular accounting cycle tasks without interruption on the new, centralized platform. "Our accounting process is much more streamlined now," said Kupchenko. "Inventory transactions come in from external systems and update Dynamics 365 inventory lists directly, so our product costing and available quantities are updated faster." And the Accounts Payable team is impressed by the speed of invoice entry, seeing an impressive 300% increase—from 20 to 60—in the number of invoices they could enter in an hour, thanks to the improved user interface in Dynamics 365.

Simplified systems with powerful functionality empower users

With Dynamics 365, a fully cloud-based centralized platform, SiteOne minimizes hardware upkeep and downtime issues for its core business systems. Not only did the transformation diminish the need for hardware maintenance and lessen the reliance on internal IT support, but the upgrade also incorporated business-boosting functionality and security into all aspects of the company’s business operations and financial processes.

The new interface is helping SiteOne’s multi-national sales team, customer service representatives, and inventory management crews, and has consistently received high marks from users. The company’s finance department appreciates the rich financial management functionality that saves them time by automating the accounting process and complex reporting tasks. With its nimble and connected systems, Dynamics 365 offers a more powerful platform modernized for future growth, delivered in a simpler and more secure interface.

Scalable and secure, Dynamics 365 makes adoption easy while keeping SiteOne ahead of the curve.

• The secure and compliant cloud-based platform is fully scalable and eliminates the time and cost associated with maintenance and support.
• Enhanced functionality and seamless third-party app integration delivers a modern and future-proof solution.
• The connected platform provides real-time visibility to inventory and supply chain status.
• Fast and personalized one-click authentication and a user-friendly interface encourages adoption and provides a positive user experience.
• Built-in commerce functionalities pave the way for future adaptation in an agile ecosystem. 

SiteOne says yes to further optimization as business grows

The Dynamics 365 platform allows easy system configuration without extensive coding or development, making it more user-centric and full of opportunity for further functionality. SiteOne looks forward to adding advanced financial reporting capabilities to its Dynamics 365 Finance platform. The addition promises to pare down costs associated with bank fees and business administration through proactive payment scheduling, prompt customer communication, and precise financial forecasting, all integrated and optimized with Dynamics 365.