Inovatec

Background

Inovatec Systems is a fintech company specializing in flexible, state-of-the-art loan origination and management software for the automotive and equipment finance industry. Founded in 2006, Inovatec currently has employees in Vancouver, Serbia, and the US and continues to grow rapidly.

Lack of Financial Visibility and Reporting

Inovatec initially used Sage 50 for its financial management and found that the system had many functional limitations regarding reporting and financial visibility. As their current system could not meet their business needs, their data was exported to Excel. All their financial reporting was handled outside the system within spreadsheets and other external tools.

"We had a lot of limitations in terms of what we were trying to do for reporting. There was a lot of manual work, a lot of Excel work, and we wanted to get away from that and have more control over our financial data but also increase efficiency," shares Amy Harada Bradley, Vice President of Finance at Inovatec Systems.

They were looking for a system to consolidate all their financial reporting, transactions, and invoice processing under one unified platform they could easily access and control. "We are rapidly growing and expanding our market share," says Amy, "So we needed a system that could also support that growth into the future."

Streamlining Financial Management with Dynamics 365 Business Central

Kwixand Solutions helped Inovatech implement Dynamics 365 Business Central to improve their financial management and reporting and drive greater visibility. They selected Business Central as it best fit their needs and they found it to be the ideal size for their mid-sized organization while also being able to handle their future growth. "Another reason we decided to go with D365 Business Central is that we already are a Microsoft shop," says Amy. "As software developers, we are already using Azure and Office 365. Everything we do is in the Microsoft world, so it made sense to have an ERP solution which integrates so well with Teams and Outlook."

For example, Business Central allows users to connect their business data to Microsoft Outlook - something that the Inovatech team found extremely useful as they could see financial data related to customers and vendor within Outlook and create and send financial documents, such as quotes and invoices.

"Kwixand Solutions have a really good level of knowledge on how to implement Business Central, especially for the small and mid-sized companies," Amy says. "The implementation was a really good experience. The Kwixand team was very responsive to all our questions and concerns and guided us throughout the entire process."

Improving Productivity and Eliminating Manual Work

One of the immediate results of implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central and optimizing their internal processes meant a drastic reduction of Excel spreadsheets and manual work. "Before it literally took up 90% of our time just to put entries in and come up with financial statements for reporting. Now that we've really cut down the time we spent on manual work, we can review and provide more value-added financial analysis to the company," says Amy.

Inovatech can now efficiently consolidate financial data and reporting from the three regions they operate in within one system without incurring manual work. They also used to keep separate Excel spreadsheets for their fixed assets, and now that process can be managed easily from within Business Central. Amy adds, "We were consistently using overtime and weekends to try and close month ends on time," says Amy. "One month after our go-live, we have been able to eliminate any kind of weekend work and overtime for closing month ends now."

Kwixand Solutions also implemented an automated AP approval workflow to streamline their internal processes further. This customization allows invoices to be sent out via Microsoft Teams so that the person who needs to approve it can view the invoice within Teams, approve it directly, and update it within Business Central without entering the platform themselves.

Providing a Long-Term Partnership

Amy has high praise for the Kwixand team and especially valued Kwixand Solutions' approach to a partnership which made her feel like they were part of her team, as opposed to external consultants.

"The Kwixand Solutions team worked like they were our business partners during the implementation, not like external consultants. They were always trying to understand what our end goals were and helping us to achieve that result," says Amy. "They were subject matter experts who we could truly rely on to give suggestions on how to tailor Business Central in a manner that made sense for our organization and work for our business processes."