JourneyTeam drives success with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

April 17, 2025

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) make up a majority of US companies and employ nearly 50% of the private workforce. This amounts to more than 60 million people whose livelihoods depend on the growth and success of SMBs—which often hinges on quick access to mission-critical resources, tools, and processes. Also, modernizing is essential to staying competitive. But what happens when these businesses need support?

Enter JourneyTeam, a long-term Microsoft partner and three-time Partner of the Year Award winner. For 30 years, JourneyTeam has provided comprehensive technology solutions to help SMB clients effectively integrate and optimize their processes. The company delivers a full-stack service, which means their clients do not need to find other partners for different technological needs. JourneyTeam provides services across Azure, Business Applications, Modern Work, and Security solution areas.

Leading clients to new ERP heights

JourneyTeam's Sherpa offering stands out as an innovative, cost-effective, and efficient way to transition small to medium-sized businesses using Dynamics 365 Business Central.

While the traditional setup for an enterprise migration service consists of one-to-one interactions, Sherpa is a cohort-based learning experience that allows multiple companies to onboard and scale quickly and simultaneously. It includes guided work sessions with trained facilitators and robust training resources. Beins explained, "It's a one-to-many program. There's one JourneyTeam instructor taking several participants through a series of workshops over a few weeks. The final week is them going live."

The value of Sherpa extends beyond saving time and money. The community inherent in a learning program of this kind fosters deep engagement and quicker mastery of the material. Participants can benefit from the questions their peers ask, rely on them for additional expertise, and feel inspired by the momentum and energy of the group. Sherpa can be the perfect fit for businesses that have reached a critical stage of growth in which they need more enterprise resource planning (ERP) structure and support but are not yet large enough to require one-on-one services.

Greg Crandall, Business Central Practice Director for JourneyTeam, made it clear that the offering does require an investment from customer participants. He said, "Implementing Business Central using our Sherpa approach requires the customer to invest double the time that they would spend if we implemented in a more one-on-one traditional approach. They have homework assignments and set-up activities that they need to complete. It's not for everyone, but if they have time and the bandwidth, then Sherpa can be an excellent approach."

SmartFlower is one of many companies that discovered Sherpa was a great fit.

Sherpa in action

SmartFlower is the maker of an innovative solar panel system that unfolds like a giant mechanical flower. The flower's moveable design enables it to follow the sun throughout the day, harnessing more energy than traditional solar panels. The company, which previously depended on Dynamics GP to manage its operations in both the US and Austria, faced several obstacles:

• Limited data table manipulation and data analysis capabilities meant more manual work for staff.
• Lack of integration with their CRM system led to slowed operational processes for common tasks like order processing management.
• Steep costs of adding users and functionality challenged business growth.
• The cost of currency exchange rate functionality and monthly data storage drove up expenses.

SmartFlower sought a unified, cloud-based system that would be accessible from multiple devices and locations with a user-friendly data visualization function and improved search––all in a more cost-effective format. JourneyTeam and their Sherpa offering helped SmartFlower quickly deploy the flexible, integrated system they needed at a cost they could afford.

The "why" at the heart of JourneyTeam

While delivering and deploying Microsoft solutions is what JourneyTeam does, their passion runs deeper than deployment. Their driving "why"? A desire to improve business outcomes for their customers.

Crandall explained that he and his JourneyTeam colleagues don't measure customer impact according to the number of systems they install. Instead, they measure their success based on their ability to empower companies to grow.

What does this look like for SmartFlower? By switching from their previous Dynamics GP deployment to Business Central, SmartFlower has experienced:

• A 50% reduction in sales order processing time.
• Improved efficiency across accounts payable, inventory, and billing.
• Seamless integration of SmartFlower's ERP system with key tools like Salesforce and Avalara.
• Enhanced data extraction and analysis in Business Central for improved decision-making.
• Elimination of the need for a paid currency exchange rate plug-in.
• Improved scalability, which cuts the cost of repeated tech adoptions.

With JourneyTeam’s help, SmartFlower is now well positioned for continued growth.

A measurable impact

Results like these have earned JourneyTeam multiple Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards.

Crandall said, "One of the biggest reasons we won Partner of the Year for Business Central is because we demonstrated multiple ways our customers were able to see a measurable business impact that helped them achieve their goals. For us, it's about making a measurable impact on a customer's business––through revenue, reduced cost, lowered risk, gained market share, or whatever it might be."

As a Microsoft partner, JourneyTeam has unlocked funding, incentives, and other benefits as part and parcel of the partner ecosystem. Access to presales funding helps JourneyTeam demonstrate Microsoft products to potential customers, increasing interest and driving sales. Post-sales funding helps ensure smooth implementation, optimizes deployment, and drives customer success.

Training, enablement, and collaboration with Microsoft product and marketing teams also enable JourneyTeam to refine their sales and tech approach and enhance their customer offerings. Participating in the ISV Success program helps showcase their services and offerings on the Microsoft commercial marketplace.

In turn, being part of private previews and special programs allows JourneyTeam to offer valuable insights into Microsoft, especially in the SMB market. Through private previews, partners get early access to upcoming tech advancements and updates from Microsoft, empowering them to provide feedback before public release. This business symbiosis accelerates growth and success for JourneyTeam and their customers while also using the partner ecosystem to drive innovation, refine solutions, and ensure that businesses of all sizes can maximize the value of Microsoft technologies.