Prospect to Cash with Data Integration in Dynamics 365

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This article has been written in collaboration with Florian Holzknecht. Florian and I decided to post this article to promote the interesting and valuable native integration between Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (ERP) and Sales (Customer Engagement - CRM). Thus, this article illustrates the why and result of the data integration, whereas the article How to setup Prospect to cash in Dynamics 365 will describe the how to

In today's fast-paced environment it is crucial to use streamlined processes and especially in the Prospect to cash scenario all of your teams have to partner up across your organization. Moreover, in each industry with intense competition, organizations are dealing with thin margins, thus, an efficient process is even more important.

Why is a transparent and efficient prospect to cash process that important?

In short, a well defined Prospect to cash process enables organization to increase sales, reduce cost and mitigate risks. Companies are able to increase sales as they are improving customer's experience or have all information available to deliver their service faster.

Furthermore, having all information available not only reduces cost simultaneously to increasing customer's experience, but also enables every organization to automatize repetitive tasks, e.g. through process automation (Microsoft Flow / Logic Apps) or simple IoT application.

Last but not least, such a process will mitigate risks, as all information of a sales process is captured transparently to comply with local or global regulations as you avoid creating departmental silos or inconsistent communication between the departments. Hence, the result of the prospect to cash integration will clearly define the origin of information, e.g. Customer Master Data will be in Dynamics 365 for Sales and Product Master Data will be transferred from Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.

All involved parties in an organization obtain full transparency of each single sales order, e.g. sales representatives can track a status of a sales order (picked, partly picked, invoiced, ...) without leaving Dynamics 365 for Sales.

All this ensures a clear collaboration between your departments to accelerate your sales cycle, generate actionable insights and reduce costs simultaneously using the data flow of Dynamics 365's standard integration through Common Data Service (CDS).

Data flow in Prospect to cash

The Prospect to cash solution uses the data integration feature of Microsoft's Power Platform synchronizing data across instances of Finance and Operations and Sales. This data integration feature uses prebuild templates and enables the data flow of accounts, contacts, products, sales quotations, sales orders, and sales invoices between Finance and Operations and Sales. The following illustration shows how the data is synchronized between Finance and Operations and Sales.

The native integration across all the different applications within Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps us overcoming the traditional challenges that nowadays we are facing in the traditional business applications deployment and maintenance.

The Outcome

In the Prospect to cash scenario you create an integration using standard templates based on the Common Data Model (CDM) with the aim to create a transparent and accelerated sales process to receive your cash as fast as possible. Therefore, this article illustrates the why and result of the data integration, whereas the article How to setup Prospect to cash in Dynamics 365 will describe the how to.

Starting with the exchange of customer accounts, where Dynamics 365 for Sales represents the source. You will identify that the account number is used as an unique identifier and is equal on both systems (Dynamics 365 for Sales - left and Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (right) to provide consistent information.

The master data for products is based on Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. As seen in the screenshot the products are replicated to Dynamics 365 for Sales to have all necessary information available at the time a quote is created to accelerates the time to quote.

With these two steps you are done with the integration of master data and will start mapping all tasks for transitional data, like sales quotes, sales order, and sales invoices.

As the exchange of the sales quotes and order will represent the same information, we are providing a more valuable insight through showing how the processing of a sales order is represented. Besides the sales order information, the status, like "picked", is visible in both systems, avoiding that the sales representative has to switch systems, hence, increasing efficiencies.

After the fulfillment of the sales order, you will create the sales invoice in Finance and Operations and simultaneously publishing this information to Sales closing the process. During the previous steps we did not mention the usage of sales tax and charges, however, these values are calculated in Finance and Operations and will be available throughout the entire process, as shown in the illustration.

In summary, you have seen the advantages of an streamlined Prospect to cash process and the result of Microsoft Dynamics 365's approach to provide the competitive edge.

If you would like to have a similar integration with Sales and a "smaller" ERP, the article Connect your business in a Lead-to-Cash scenario within Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics 365 for Sales illustrates the similar scenario between Dynamics 365 Business Central and Sales.