The Dynamics 365 Document Challenge Series: Part One
Documents are an essential part of doing business, but for many organizations, documents are a cost center rather than a profit lever. With many different document types to juggle, you’re probably facing a wide range of challenges with retrieval, formatting, data aggregation and more.
You’re not alone in experiencing these document challenges - knowledge workers spend on average 50% of their time creating and preparing documents, while 48% struggle to find the documents they need quickly. It’s clear that many companies are feeling the growing pains of modern document management.
These common document challenges can feel particularly pronounced when you’re working with a robust ERP system like Dynamics 365. While it’s an undoubtedly helpful tool that your business couldn’t be without, its built-in document features can at times feel restrictive for organizations with complex document requirements. Overcoming these document challenges lies in adopting a best-practice framework for creating, managing and delivering documents.
Best practices for creating an efficient documentation program
When it comes down to it, a successful document creation, distribution and archiving program is a repeatable framework for all users, but it requires careful consideration and planning:
Understand the business need
First, you need to understand the business need driving the need for a new documentation program. Is a slow invoicing process causing cash flow issues? Are confusing packing slips resulting in costly shipping errors? Or are document tasks simply taking too much time? With workers today spending almost half of their time finding, creating and preparing documents, modernizing your documentation program is an effective way to make significant time and cost savings.
Identify the current challenges (for business users and IT)
Next, you need to find out exactly what makes the current document processes complex. Is it a lack of flexibility for business users, as the absence of user-friendly document management software makes it hard to make changes?
For the IT department, document challenges typically revolve around maintaining documents for business users, often compounded by a lack of resources. The high-maintenance burden of these complex documents creates a constant bottleneck for the department.
Design for end customers and internal team members
Equipped with a better understanding of the business need and precisely what challenges users are facing, you’re able to find the right solution. This requires a dual focus: creating valuable documents for end users (clear, branded and data-rich) while building an efficient and repeatable process for your team (intuitive tools that reduce IT dependency).
Establish your delivery plan
Next comes the delivery plan. Define how your documents will be distributed based on customer and client needs – do they prefer email, print or customer portal? Or a combination? The plan should also take archiving into account. Where will documents go once they’re created? How do you make this process near autonomous to save time and ensure documents are retained for the correct length of time?
Repeat and adjust as needed
A process that works today needs to be flexible enough to work tomorrow. A documentation program built to adapt means you’re always ready to meet your customers’ needs.
Finding the right document management partner
Knowing what you need is half the battle, and finding the right partner will help you build document management processes that actually meet your needs.
This is where Lasernet comes in. From data to document, Lasernet simplifies the way you and your team work. By streamlining the entire process, from ideation to delivery, our document management software reduces your IT and operational overhead, giving you more time and money to invest in revenue-generating tasks.
In this three-part series, we’ll dive into some of the most common document challenges faced by D365 users and demonstrate how Lasernet helps them overcome these challenges. In this first installment, we’ll focus on complicated formatting, large data volumes, and data aggregation from other systems.
Find out more: What is Lasernet?
Challenge one: Complicated formatting
A common challenge D365 users face is getting documents to look exactly the way they want. After all, D365 is first and foremost a business process system, not a content management platform. As a result, many document customization processes are complex. For example, changes to certain document types, such as SSRS reports, often require advanced technical knowledge that exceeds the capabilities of many users.
That’s not the only formatting problem D365 users experience – embedding product images, videos, CAD files and rich media in documents is challenging. This is because the rich media files are rarely stored within D365 itself, but in external systems. Connecting your documents with these external sources and pulling the correct media for a specific document, such as the right product image for a line item on a purchase order, often requires custom coding.
These dynamic visuals make the document more valuable for the recipient. Without an intuitive way to add product images, videos, CAD files and other rich media, your text-heavy documents aren’t as impactful as they could be. For example, your brand may seem less professional, and there’s a higher chance of customer confusion.
How Lasernet makes document formatting simple
Document control is simple when you integrate Dynamics 365 with Lasernet, as it offers a more scalable and user-friendly alternative to Electronic Reporting (ER) and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). From within the familiar D365 interface, users can define exactly what data to include, how it should be formatted and where it needs to go, whether that’s on screen, printed or emailed.
Lasernet in action: Ocean Optics
To demonstrate how Lasernet makes document formatting simple, let’s look at the example of Ocean Optics, a leading provider of spectral devices, sensors and systems.
For every custom-configured product created, a highly specific blueprint drawing unique to that product’s configuration is required. The organization’s previous ERP system, Oracle EBS, contained a custom application to generate blueprint drawings. However, it was inflexible and required updates in the form of time-consuming software rewrites.
When they transitioned from Oracle to D365, they found that this business-critical capability wasn’t possible out of the box. Lasernet closed this process gap by creating a smooth, automated workflow. Here’s how it works:
- Users incorporated visuals using D365 F&O’s Product Configurator-generated bill of materials (BOM)
- BOM data was shared with Lasernet
- Lasernet connected the dots by attaching the relevant images and drawings
This smooth process created documents containing all the information the recipient needed. The result was enriched reports that are integrated seamlessly into D365 F&O, with no need for costly recurring software rewrites.
As the Ocean Optics case demonstrates, complicated formatting doesn’t have to be a barrier. Lasernet provides the link between D365 data and the ability to add rich media easily, automating the process and removing the need for costly custom coding.
Find out more: How Ocean Optics established document control and automated complex processes
Challenge two: Large data volumes
For many organizations, the sheer volume of documents that need to be processed and archived is a common challenge. The high-volume document handling challenge grows as the business does, making efficient document management processes a non-negotiable priority. When a business handles terabytes of data, any inefficiency in the document generation, distribution and archiving process can create significant bottlenecks with far-reaching consequences, including slowing down critical operations like billing and shipping.
How Lasernet manages large data volumes with ease
Lasernet allows you to easily generate, distribute and archive large volumes of documents with a scalable architecture that gives you the flexibility to grow and adapt as your business changes. With Lasernet’s processing power, you can build and distribute thousands of documents in seconds to meet the needs of your customers and clients.
Lasernet in action: How Steel Warehouse took control of over a terabyte of data to create valuable documentation
Steel Warehouse, a third-generation family-owned industrial steel processing business, relied on five different ERP systems, including two that were homegrown. Internally, processes were inefficient, forcing staff to manually add 50% of all incoming invoices.
Externally, this fragmentation directly impacted the customer experience. With documents managed in different repositories, it was difficult for customers to easily review essential documents like invoices, packing slips and mill certificates.
After deciding to modernize by moving to Microsoft Dynamics 365, the company knew it needed a unified solution that could handle both its vast archive of legacy documents and its complex needs for creating new ones.
Document repositories
The first challenge was tackling document repositories. Steel Warehouse worked closely with Formpipe to process the massive amount of data from the old systems, moving it into Formpipe’s archiving solution, Autoform DM. Over a month, over one terabyte of vendor invoices from the legacy document archive were transferred. With powerful OCR capabilities, this gave them a searchable, centralized archive for all their historical documents, accessible directly through D365.
Document creation and distribution
The second challenge was managing future document creation and distribution. For this, they implemented Lasernet to handle the high volume and variety of documents, from invoices to shipping labels. One of the company’s main priorities was to improve the customer experience by combining multiple documents, like a packing list and a material certification, into a single, convenient email, instead of separate emails for each document type. Lasernet's powerful form editor also gave them the flexibility to create modern, customized documents that properly represented their business, something their old systems couldn't do.
The new, integrated system went live within three months. Post-implementation, less than 1% of incoming documents from suppliers were uploaded manually, saving staff many hours each week. For outgoing documents, customers now receive a single email containing all the relevant documentation.
Steel Warehouse now has complete control over its brand and document formats, transforming a once highly fragmented process into a simple, end-to-end solution that encompasses document creation through to archiving.
Find out more: How Steel Warehouse took control of its data and documentation
Challenge 3: Scattered data from other systems
The reality for most organizations is that all the data required for the documents they need to create rarely resides in one place. While D365 holds a significant portion of the data you need, other critical information is scattered across various systems, including but not limited to:
- Sales platforms like Salesforce
- Accounting software like Xero and Sage
Natively, D365 doesn’t have an easy way to reach into these external systems and pull the data you need into your documents in real-time. Confined to D365, this leaves your teams with two options: onerous manual work involving copying and pasting information, or costly and complex custom development projects to build and maintain integrations for each of your external systems. Neither of these options is particularly appealing and creates additional problems, whether due to human errors or a ballooning IT budget.
Lasernet simplifies data aggregation
Integrating reliable document management software, on the other hand, makes data aggregation simple. Embedded into D365, Lasernet works seamlessly with your workflows and upgrade paths – there’s no need to leave the D365 interface to create the documents you need.
The Lasernet Connector extracts data directly from D365 to populate predefined templates and create personalized and on-brand documents, from invoices and statements to reports and labels. By taking data from all areas of Dynamics, Lasernet connects your business-critical data to create high-value documents for your customers and clients.
Lasernet in action: Munters
Let’s explore what Lasernet’s data aggregation capabilities can do in practice. Munters, a global leader in energy-efficient and sustainable air treatment solutions, used Lasernet to streamline complex document creation in an effort to boost operational efficiency. To deliver on its servitization business model, which guarantees equipment uptime and prioritizes high customer satisfaction, the company needed a user-friendly but powerful platform that could work hand-in-hand with IFS, Munters’ core ERP system.
As well as introducing much-needed brand consistency across many document types and allowing for the effortless integration of media elements, Lasernet allowed Munters to aggregate data from various systems. This allowed them to create and distribute high-impact documents that their customers and partners can rely on.
Let’s keep tackling D365 document challenges
Complicated formatting, high data volumes and scattered data from other systems are major bottlenecks for D365 users on a mission to create on-brand, data-rich documents. As we’ve demonstrated through real-world customer stories, implementing the right output and document management software puts you in complete control of your document processes, solving these challenges once and for all.
We’re not done yet. In part two of the Dynamics 365 document challenges series, we tackle the next set of common document challenges: designing and maintaining structured displays, providing customers with document self-service capabilities and navigating multiple delivery mechanisms. If you're curious to learn more or speak to one of our Lasernet experts, fill out the form below and a member of our team will reach out to you.
