Revolutionizing workflow: Omega achieves up to 50% time savings with Dynamics 365 Business Central

Manufacturing and supply companies are constantly seeking ways to innovate and modernize warehouse operations. Omega Industries (Omega) recognized the need to streamline internal processes and facilitate data access to enhance the customer experience and create more efficient workdays. To develop a solution, Omega turned to Microsoft partner Encore Business Solutions (Encore) and Microsoft.

Going from a big dream to one of the largest railroad crossing suppliers in the country

Omega was founded more than 40 years ago by Isidoros Garifalakis, a steel fabricator from Greece. Garifalakis came to the United States with the dream of starting his own company. Accompanied by his family and a few skilled workers who were devoted to their customers and hard work, Garifalakis built the business he had envisioned. Now, Omega has become one of the largest suppliers of main-line railroad crossings in the United States.

Omega is committed to excellence in every way. “It’s important to us to keep a personal connection with everybody that we work with,” says Argyro Apostolou, Co-owner and Chief Financial Officer of Omega. “We take great pride in our quality and we’re not willing to compromise to save a penny.”

Since its founding, Omega had operated primarily by pen-and-paper systems. It eventually transferred some processes to Microsoft 365 solutions, including Microsoft Excel, and used Microsoft Dynamics GP. However, Omega realized that it needed a new enterprise-resource-planning (ERP) system to expand and provide optimal service. “To compete in this industry, you have to maintain a high level of efficiency,” says Maria Leonard, Corporate Financial Controller at Omega. “We wanted to get our production, warehouse, and accounting management into the same system.”

Omega started working toward a new ERP system in 2017 but found it challenging to incorporate the system into existing workflows. To continue providing high-quality service to customers and employees, the company turned to Encore for a solution.

Giving employees uniquely configured solutions using Dynamics 365 Business Central

In 2022, the two companies began working together to decide which technology would best meet Omega’s goal of helping employees access data more easily and work more efficiently. Encore and Omega ultimately chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Dynamics 365 Business Central. Encore sought to understand Omega’s internal processes and showed the company how Business Central could simplify those processes. “It was a turnkey, out-of-the-box solution that we could configure to our needs,” says Leonard.

After years trying to implement an ERP that never came to fruition, Omega took an incremental approach to adopting Microsoft technology so that it could see small successes that would inspire employees. It started by moving its finance and accounting teams to Business Central in January 2023. With help from Encore to prepare and train employees, the migration was smooth. “We were expecting to hit a lot of bumps,” says Apostolou. “But the transition from going live to getting people functioning comfortably on a day-to-day basis was a lot easier and smoother than I expected.” By October 2023, Omega’s entire finance team was running operations solely on Business Central.

Cutting up to 50% of time spent on daily tasks and reducing days spent on month-end close from 15 to 6

Previously, it was challenging for employees to enter and find project data. Often, they would have to stop what they were doing and find someone from another department to help them access the information they were looking for. But with Business Central, Omega has its project details, sales data, and other information stored in a single, cloud-based environment. Thus, employees can create pages or files for new projects in a secure, instantaneously shared, and easily accessible space. Anyone in Omega can look up project data and order information quickly, which has improved efficiency across departments. This streamlined functionality has made it possible for Omega employees to focus on further improvements in the company rather than operating in a constant state of catching up.

By late 2023, Omega’s finance employees began to achieve outstanding successes by using Business Central for operations and data insights, allowing Omega to reduce its finance team from 7 people to 5. “Microsoft 365 just brings everything together and works a lot better and faster,” says Tom Piper, Director of Production and Quality Control at Omega. Now, finance employees can access insights and pull up reports within minutes, which empowers them to respond faster to customer inquiries and reduce manual processes. Additionally, the lengthy month-end close process of reviewing and reconciling the month’s financial activity went from a 15-day to a 6-day activity. “Between efforts toward automation using Dynamics 365 Business Central and implementing tandem applications, we’ve helped employees cut time spent on routine tasks by up to 50%,” says Leonard.

In September 2024, Omega experienced a cybersecurity incident that took down servers and network access. “It really brought our company to a standstill for a moment,” says Leonard. During this crisis, Omega discovered an unexpected benefit of Business Central. Despite temporarily losing all server data, the company still had access to a year’s worth of data that it could use to continue paying vendors, billing customers, and tracking sales orders without interruption. “If it wasn’t for a cloud-based system, we would have been in the dark for almost a month while our server files were being reconstructed,” says Leonard. “We were able to keep functioning in Business Central.”