Needs assessment pilot drives 43% conversion rate

ABC E BUSINESS is a long-time Microsoft partner focused on driving business success for small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers through standardized, fixed-price implementations of Dynamics 365 Business Central. “We know that SMB customers don’t have the time or the technical staff needed to maintain highly customized solutions, so we leverage the standard features of Business Central and ISV solutions built on Business Central to meet their requirements,” said Lars Hoving, Chief Executive Officer of ABC E BUSINESS. “Customers know exactly what to expect for any given implementation and can calculate the cost on our web site—nothing is a surprise.”

To expand its efforts around bringing its packaged offers to market, ABC E BUSINESS joined a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central needs-based assessment workshop pilot in October 2022. These engagements are designed to uncover business pain points, build customer intent, and maximize opportunities for Dynamics 365 Business Central using a mix of in-context demos, customer success stories, and examination of the art of the possible. The outcome of the workshop is a presentation that showcases how Business Central, and its integration with the Microsoft Cloud, can uniquely address the customer’s specific challenges.

ABC E BUSINESS took an immersive approach with the needs assessment offering, incorporating it directly into every customer engagement. “After doing our first workshop as part of the pilot, we saw how beneficial the approach and materials were in demonstrating the value of Business Central, as well as building customer trust,” said Hoving. “We immediately created a standard way to implement the workshop as part of our sales process and haven’t looked back since.”

In the nine months that it participated in the pilot, ABC E BUSINESS delivered 65 needs assessment workshops and closed 28 of them—a 43 percent conversion rate. “It has been an extremely useful tool for us because it is also available to SMB customers that aren’t registered as managed accounts in the Microsoft sales system. This has enabled us to use assessment funding for a much broader set of customers, helping lower our overall cost of sale,” added Hoving.

Helping streamline financial and warehouse management at PK Benelux

One of the customers that ABC E BUSINESS helped with a Dynamics 365 Business Central needs assessment was PK Benelux. PK Benelux is best known for its quintessential Dutch brand LUCOVITAAL®, offering top quality health products at the most competitive prices, guaranteed. The LUCOVITAAL product line includes vitamins, supplements, products for sports performance and pain relief, nutrition and weight management, skincare and rejuvenation, and relaxation. It’s estimated that one in four households in the Netherlands uses one or more LUCOVITAAL products. The company wanted to automate its financial processes and simplify warehouse management. Using the needs assessment activity, ABC E BUSINESS was able to quickly engage with the team at PK Benelux to evaluate their business requirements and show how Dynamics 365 Business Central, combined with an out-of-the-box scan management solution by Business Central partner Tasklet Factory, could effectively deliver the desired business outcomes.

ABC E BUSINESS began the implementation in February 2023 and went live at the beginning of July. With the team at PK Benelux already seeing results from the new Business Central solution they are also considering how to extend those benefits with Power BI reporting.

“The ability to simplify and automate finance and warehouse management processes in a single, integrated solution that we can augment with Power Platform for improved data visibility and insights is extremely beneficial for our organization,” said Angela Steenbergen-Peters, CFO at PK Benelux. “Working with ABC E BUSINESS on the assessment made it clear how we could address our challenges with an easy-to-use, SaaS solution that would grow with our business.”

Expanding assessment offerings this year

ABC E BUSINESS is excited that as a result of the successful pilot, Microsoft has expanded its funding for SMB partner activities in the current fiscal year to include new Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Sales needs assessments, as well as an AIM migration assessment targeted at moving customers from on-premises Dynamics NAV and Dynamics GP solutions to Dynamics 365 Business Central.

“All of the new assessment materials and funding that became available on October 1 are great for partners like us,” said Hoving. “We obviously want to close as many deals as possible, and the added value these pre-sales assessments provide for our customers is going to make that a much easier proposition.”

For Dynamics on-premises migration, the AIM assessment provides a particularly good opportunity for growth, given ABC E BUSINESS strong capabilities in this area. “We successfully migrated all 100 of our existing Dynamics NAV customers to Dynamics 365 Business Central four years ago,” said Hoving. “Because we built a migration tool to make that process even easier, we have the ability to use the AIM migration assessment and our own expertise to accelerate cloud migration for net new customers and partners alike, while also continuing to lower our cost of sale.”

Learn more about the new Dynamics 365 and Power Platform needs assessments here.

“After doing our first workshop as part of the pilot, we saw how beneficial the approach and materials were in demonstrating the value of Business Central, as well as building customer trust. We immediately created a standard way to implement the workshop as part of our sales process.”

— Lars Hoving, Chief Executive Officer, ABC E BUSINESS

“Working with ABC E BUSINESS on the assessment made it clear how we could address our challenges with an easy-to-use, SaaS solution that would grow with our business.”

— Angela Steenbergen-Peters, CFO, PK Benelux, LUCOVITAAL

ABC E BUSINESS uses needs assessment to grow Dynamics 365 Business Central practice