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What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

  • 1.  What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Founding Member
    Posted 06-01-2022 07:18
    hi all,

    We're in the process of moving our ERP/Finance system from Infor SunSystems to 365 Business Central, whilst of course continuing to use Vena! We're hoping to be live with BC at the back end of 2022.

    I just wondered if there were other Vena & BC customers out there who I could connect with to hear about their experiences with integration with Vena.  Even if you're not, I wondered if others could share details of finance systems they're using & integrating to Vena to help people make connections with people in similar situations.

    thanks!
    Josh

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    Josh Weinberg
    Head of Financial Systems & Change
    Citizens Advice
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  • 2.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Posted 06-09-2022 16:58
    Hi Josh!

    Thanks for posting in the Forum - this is certainly an interesting experience you and your organization are going through! While I haven't gone through anything similar, hopefully me replying to this thread can bump this to the top of discussions to see if anyone else can chime in.

    But! I do want to loop in our speaker and expert from Excelerate, @Megan Strant and see if she can hop in and give some tips/tricks on change management when moving ERP/finance systems. I think she might be able to share some good insights and considerations with our community!

    Thank you! 😄​

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    Irene Tang
    Community Marketing Manager
    Vena Solutions
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  • 3.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Posted 06-10-2022 10:10
    Hello!

    We are in higher education and our financial ERP system is Jenzabar. We would love to connect to any other Jenzabar schools. We still benefit from all industries as finance is finance. We would also like to ask questions to other Vena customers that use ALL (most) of the platform. We are using reporting, account reconciliation, forecasting, budget, capital/fixed assets, and Power BI connector. We are in the end stage of implementation and have A LOT to learn.

    If anyone is up for sharing templates to at least give examples of what works best for you please attach to this thread. Doesn't matter if our mapping isn't the same. The templates give us great ideas to work from. We are always process improving and looking for the most efficient way to do things.

    Look forward to meeting others!

    Thanks,
    Carrie

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    Carrie Billings
    Assistant Controller
    Indiana Tech
    ccbillings@indianatech.edu
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Posted 06-16-2022 16:50

    Hi Josh!

    Sounds like some complex changes coming in your organisation.

    I have worked with a few organisations moving financial systems. A lot of really detailed work is required to ensure it is smooth.
    Ensure you complete a thorough Impact Assessment to review the key areas where you need to discuss process change, knowledge and skills required to support staff and the technical detail.
    Think through the 'as is' and 'to be' for staff, what they are doing now and the new way. What processes and data will reside in each system. At times the data move from new to old systems can work well but what about the people who are moving their daily activities from one system to the next. Some of the features in the new can change their role and processes. So consider the gap.
    Obviously learning is key - if staff require new skills and to move quickly to using the new system.
    Think about how much learning there will be, and how long. Slice it up - long detailed learning for those roles that will use the system the most compared to reduced time for staff that will use less features.
    To really run innovative learning, use a few different design principles like having it be in the flow of work, shorter sharper modules, on-demand where possible so people can learn when best suits them. Combine some on -demand with then in person demo and question time. 

    Hope some of helps with considering other aspects outside of the integration itself.



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    Megan Strant
    Strant Consulting
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  • 5.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Founding Member
    Posted 06-23-2022 05:52
    Many thanks for your replies @Megan Strant @Carrie Billings, and @Irene Tang for bumping :-)

    Megan - yes, you're absolutely right, there's a lot of work! Part of the challenge is how iterative those discussions are... there's a limit to how much great thinking you can do about the 'new' way until you've got detailed understanding of how it can work in the new software. There's only so much you can be confident of about the new software from a procurement process, and whilst taking more time to understand is good ​​​​​in some ways, it can also challenge momentum.
    I really like your points about different ways of learning, definitely something for us to reflect on.

    Carrie - never heard of Jenzabar! Sorry can't help much. but hopefully others can.
    thanks

    #GiveAndGetHelp

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    Josh Weinberg
    Head of Financial Systems & Change
    Citizens Advice
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  • 6.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Posted 07-13-2022 13:47
    We are on Business Central (on-prem) and are just kicking off our Vena implementation.  We should be live by 10/1.

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    Kimberly Joyce
    Chief Financial Officer
    RL Hudson
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  • 7.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Founding Member
    Posted 07-19-2022 19:14

    Would love to hear more from @Kimberly Joyce and @Josh Weinberg as you get further along in your integrations and implementations, especially if you take different approaches (on-prem vs hosted). We're probably still a couple of years away, but we'll likely be considering upgrading to Business Central from Dynamics NAV 2013.​​

    @Megan Strant and @Josh Weinberg I wonder if it's worth framing a system change as a positive that drives out current data or process changes that might be unwanted? My organization will be implementing a new CRM starting in the fall and this is a big topic of conversation. Those iterative conversations can be a slog, but building some positivity into the conversation can go a long way towards keeping people excited. We're also probably still a couple of years away from upgrading our ERP, but we're starting to think about a potential coding structure that is more streamlined. I'm already starting to shop these ideas around internally so that when the time comes to evaluate and implement a new system, we'll have a clearer idea of what we don't like from our current setup.

    #GiveAndGetHelp​​​​

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    Brendan Eger
    Assoc. Dir. of Information Systems and Analytics
    Partners In Health
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  • 8.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Founding Member
    Posted 11-07-2022 10:54
    for anyone interested in this, whilst we've basically created our integration, we are looking forward to hearing more on the upcoming Vena Fall '22 Product Release, where there's a New MS Dynamics Business Central Direct Data Integration
    We obviously hope this direct integration, will ultimately be the route we'll use, as our developed integration is more complex (and thus probably less robust) & reliant on Jet Reports, overnight scheduling, and Power Automate (supported by useful instructions from Vena).

    Happy to share more as our experience evolves for anyone interested.

    Josh

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    Josh Weinberg
    Head of Financial Systems & Change
    Citizens Advice
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Founding Member
    Posted 12-05-2022 16:30
    Thanks for sharing @Josh Weinberg! I was just talking to our CFO today about when we might upgrade our current ERP and while we're still thinking it'll probably be 2-3 years out, it's good to know about these types of native integrations, as well as the creative solutions others are implementing (we also use Jet Reports and Power Automate for some workaround processes).​​

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    Brendan Eger
    Assoc. Dir. of Information Systems and Analytics
    Partners In Health
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  • 10.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Founding Member
    Posted 09-25-2023 17:09

    @Josh Weinberg and @Kimberly Joyce I'd be curious to hear about any major learnings you've had from implementing and integrating Business Central and Vena, now that we're about a year on. We're planning to start an Accounting/ERP evaluation next Spring and are considering a number of changes to what data we collect and various related Finance/Accounting processes.

    Did you use your implementation to make any major changes or were you focused on making the new system match your current tools/processes/data?

    Did you have any major challenges with integration or user adoption of the new tool?



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    Brendan Eger
    Assoc. Dir. of Information Systems and Analytics
    Partners In Health
    ------------------------------



  • 11.  RE: What finance system are you using? Interested to hear from 365 Business Central customers

    Founding Member
    Posted 10-02-2023 06:00

    hi @Brendan Eger, good to hear from you. The integration that now exists in Vena wasn't there through our implementation, so we have used scheduled Jet Reports (a BC add-on) plus some Microsoft Flows (Power Automate) to get data into Vena. It's been a bit fiddly, particularly as the scheduler requires some internal IT resource to find an appropriate server to run on. We're still not fully automated on this - though we're coping without ok. It was definitely fiddlier than I'd hoped/envisioned, especially for 2 very Microsoft oriented products. 

    I've started recently to look at the integration that has since been made available within Channels & may move over to that - it looks should be fine for our TB load, though not provide the level of detail we'd like on our transaction data (which is just drilldown data for extra info on any transactions), i.e. we'd continue to use Jet Reports for that. 

    We made some significant changes on implementing

    • around our P2P processes (moved from 3-way to 2-way as we basically have no 'goods' to receipt)
    • and in our dimensions / coding - by using a functionality our 365 BC reseller has - called 'linked dimensions' to reduce to one 'project' code anyone had to enter -which would then automatically identify a funder / fund type (restricted/unrestricted) / department code. (Code=member). 

    No big issues with user adoption- helped that the old system wasn't well liked! We put a fair bit of resource / time into comms & training of course which I'm sure helped. 

    Happy to share more if ever useful & good luck.



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    Josh Weinberg
    Head of Financial Systems & Change
    Citizens Advice
    ------------------------------