Planning your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations implementation

When your organization has made the decision to move ahead with a Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (D365FO) project, what should you expect from your implementation partner? What should your internal team be ready to provide? On this episode we talk with two D365FO consultants who have been through the deployment project experience multiple times and have some recommendations on what customers need to know upfront. MSDW contributing expert Satish Panwar and Sukrut Parab, both with Hitachi Solutions America, join us for a discussion of some of the key planning criteria for a new project. Even if you have been through an ERP project before, there are probably going to be many new challenges with D365FO if it is your first enterprise-scale cloud ERP project. That means the expectations at various project stages will be new, like the need for fewer customizations in many cases. But other demands will be greater, like knowledge of cloud tools and systems, from D365 Lifecycle Services to key Microsoft cloud products like Azure DevOps, Azure Service Bus, Teams, and more. We also touch on Satish and Sukrut's experiences working with the Microsoft FastTrack team, the promise of the Business Events framework, and other considerations when planning a go-live. Show Notes: 3:30 – 5 of the most important things to look at when approaching an implementation 7:15 – Selecting a project methodology 9:00 – What should D365FO customers expect in the early stages of a project? 12:30 – Why most clients need fewer customizations with D365FO than with past AX releases. 16:00 – Project and environment management strategies that factor in the ongoing release waves 20:15 – What's new in LCS and Azure DevOps for D365FO projects 24:30 – Other tools that customers should expect to be using, especially Teams 30:00 – Data migration for D365FO – overall role and planning in the implementation phase 34:45 – Other key goals that D365FO projects must account for 37:00 – What unexpected need tend to arise on projects – data management, custom services, integration of other Azure technology 39:50 – The importance of business events 42:00 – Planning for go-live, including FastTrack