Encore Business Solutions (Encore), a Canadian company with offices throughout Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest, offers consulting services that focus on implementation, integration, and support of Microsoft technologies.

Encore helps its customers by aligning modern technology solutions to its customers’ plans for growth in order to ensure they have the tools needed to be successful. Their consulting services include business technology planning, software implementation, customization, training, support, and systems integration.

Working with a large variety of customer budgets, timelines, industries, and use-cases, Encore has implemented thousands of solutions throughout its 29-year history.

A Microsoft partner since 1990, Encore has over 100 experienced business and technology professionals guiding over 800 customers through all of the necessary planning and implementation steps required to roll out and adopt such solutions as ERP, CRM, Business Intelligence, IT Infrastructure, and Cloud.

Struggling to keep up with rapid growth

One customer, a national, not-for-profit organization, who delivers research and training programs in Canada working with over 50 post-secondary institutions, thousands of companies, and many governments, experienced rapid growth that doubled their revenue.

As the organization grew to include offices across the country and a couple hundred employees, it became clear that the accounting solution they had been using, QuickBooks, was no longer adequate or sustainable in meeting the needs of the organization.

The organization had already been using a heavily customized in-house solution to fill gaps in the functionality of QuickBooks. This in-house solution was never designed to be a true financial solution, and so lacked the controls and automation that the organization required to ensure its long-term success as it continued to grow.

Implementing a new software solution using Dynamics 365 and Azure

The organization reached out to Encore for help in implementing a Dynamics 365 solution to address its finances and operations. The new solution was able to address the functionality gaps the organization had previously looked to address themselves—notably helping the organization handle invoicing, purchase orders, and payment requisitions.

With Encore’s help, the organization has already successfully implemented the first phase of the solution, and the next phase of implementation should ultimately render the organization’s in-house stop-gap solution entirely obsolete.

Encore also helped the organization implement Dynamics 365 for its sales organization, helping the company manage relationships with its partners and stakeholders.

Encore’s expertise and guidance has been instrumental to the organization’s success in implementing Dynamics 365. The ongoing relationship has also proved fruitful for developing internal capabilities, ensuring the new solution is widely and successfully adopted across the organization.

Benefitting from the move to Azure

Moving to a cloud solution hosted on Azure has also benefitted the organization by enabling it to scale quickly, keep software updates current, and access its network anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

The ongoing partnership with Encore has helped the customer develop its internal capabilities with the Dynamics 365 implementation. The organization continues to lean on Encore for guidance and support, with Encore acting as a sounding board and a liaison to Microsoft for any issues that may arise. Working towards its vision of a single integrated system and source of truth for reporting, the customer is confident that Dynamics 365 will enable them to achieve this goal.