Although they often sit in the background, a business’s back-office operations are core to its success. The likes of finance, admin and manufacturing act as the heart of the company, keeping processes ticking along smoothly.
If your back-office teams aren’t efficient, it can quickly lead to obstacles that disrupt performance and limit your growth.
However, many operational teams often find themselves stuck with legacy systems and traditional platforms. Resulting headaches include intense administrative burden, poor data visibility and minimal capacity for strategic decisions.
Business Central is a platform designed to modernise back-office teams and ease those burdens.
We explore how Business Central supports various teams to achieve operational excellence.
Finance
Business Central gives finance teams total control and simplifies accounting practices. It places financial data into one centralised platform, allowing users to match transactions for bank reconciliation and track fixed assets.
It supports multiple currencies, languages and exchange rates, so businesses can successfully tap into global markets and work with overseas clients.
It also improves reporting, including cash flow analysis and revenue forecasts. Automated workflows and AI assistance ease the month-end administrative burden most financial teams face. The connected nature of Business Central then makes it easier to share real-time reports with the whole organisation for empowered decision making that drives performance.
By automating financial tasks, finance teams reclaim their time to work on growth strategies while fuelling the rest of the business.
Sales and service
Sales and service teams need to provide optimal experiences to win in a competitive landscape. In Business Central, these teams can keep better track of their customer interactions.
It gives sales sight of opportunities to upsell and renew contracts and empowers service agents to get in front of complaints and meet expectations.
Business Central connects with other Microsoft apps, like Outlook and Teams, meaning users get contextual information within the channels they use to communicate with customers.
It also enables the monitoring of order statuses and service tickets to stay on top of customer queries. By gaining this insight, teams can deliver experiences that ensure long-term loyalty and increased satisfaction rates.
Project management
Projects require careful tracking of time, actions and resource.
Business Central allows teams to easily monitor this, as well as review project budgets. There’s no risk of falling off track, allowing projects to be completed smoothly.
It offers real-time analysis of project statuses and resource planning. As a result, businesses can ensure they allocate appropriate skill and capacity to customer projects.
Invoices are also incorporated to compare planned and actual costs, making it easier to manage profitability. Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot can also fetch the data required, reduced the need for manual input from project leaders.
Supply chain
Optimised supply chains ensure businesses have the inventory they need consistently, balancing customer expectations and cost management.
Business Central brings vendor management, order fulfilment, purchasing and e-commerce together. It gives teams a constant insight into their stock needs, making for easier planning.
Inventory management is also simplified, with real-time analysis of required stock versus actual figures. Copilot can create inventory forecasts, enabling accurate ordering and ability to meet customer expectations.
With a better sight of stock needs, manufacturing teams can also make sure they are filling requirements without using excess supplies. This improves cost-effectiveness and agility across operations.
Bring operations together with Business Central
Business Central has clear benefits for your respective teams. More importantly, it brings them together, allowing effective end-to-end processes and unified data insight.
With enhanced efficiency and productivity across operations, staff will be able to make data-driven decisions that elevate customer service, manage costs and improve strategy.
