Fellowmind drives growth and efficiency with integrated Dynamics 365 solution

Fellowmind helps customers accelerate their digital transformation journey with state-of-the-art Microsoft technologies. Fellowmind Denmark, founded nearly 25 years ago, is part of the Fellowmind Group and serves manufacturing, automotive, financial services, public sector, healthcare, and retail customers from eight offices. A merger with three companies left Fellowmind Denmark with disparate and disjointed sales, project management, and financial systems and complex and redundant processes. The company implemented an integrated solution that uses Dynamics 365 Finance, Project Operations, Sales, and Microsoft Fabric to streamline project management and sales, simplify and accelerate month-end close, and allocate resources more effectively.

Post-merger fragmentation reveals the need for a unified platform

Fellowmind Denmark, a leading European technology consulting firm, specializes in enhancing business processes, improving efficiency, and driving growth for its clients through innovative and customized digital strategies while helping them become more connected. As Fellowmind Denmark grew through acquisitions, it became increasingly clear that the company’s own systems could no longer keep up with the demands of a dynamic business and customer expectations.

After a merger of three companies in 2021 and 2022, Fellowmind Denmark struggled with the redundancy and complexities of disparate legacy systems that included Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision), SAP, and multiple local solutions for finance and project management. “Nothing was centralized,” says Søren Andersen, Director, PMO at Fellowmind Denmark. “We had three different solutions, and everybody would use various spreadsheets or third-party tools to manage their projects. This patchwork of systems made it challenging to allocate resources efficiently, often resulting in project managers spending too much time staffing projects and possibly not utilizing capacity in an optimal way.

Fragmented financial data and reporting led to inefficient month-end closing, invoicing, and other crucial processes, slowing down the workflow, and making it difficult to gain full insights into project budgets, actuals, and potential issues.

Fellowmind Denmark knew that it needed a standardized platform that centralized sales, project management, resource allocation, and financial data processes, that could take advantage of the latest technologies and AI capabilities, with seamlessly integrated measures for compliance with requirements such as the European Union’s GDPR. Enhanced reporting and analytics capabilities were also crucial for Fellowmind Denmark to stay ahead in a competitive market. 

Sales, project management, and finance are consolidated in Dynamics 365

Applying its expertise to the challenges it faced after the mergers, Fellowmind Denmark embarked on a digital transformation journey of its own in January 2024. The company chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 because it offers a single solution that seamlessly manages sales, project operations, and finance data and processes on a unified, centralized platform that enhances efficiency, improves consistency, and provides modern data analytics capabilities—and as a Microsoft Partner, Fellowmind Denmark wanted to adopt the same state-of-the-art Microsoft technologies that it implemented for its customers.

The solution integrates operations of the merged companies using Dynamics 365 Finance, Project Operations, and Sales, and the company uses Microsoft Fabric as its data analytics platform. The solution is configured to fit the needs of the different project types, such as infrastructure, development, and change management, that Fellowmind manages for its customers. 

Fellowmind Denmark invested heavily in change management to help users adapt to the new system and to build project managers’ capabilities in using Project Operations to manage projects. Along with training sessions and videos, the company established a super user network that included representatives from different solution areas, who assisted with the solution's design and helped train and support colleagues. Fellowmind Denmark also gave some employees early access to the new system at key points. “We wanted to prepare the organization for adopting the solution, so we used a phased approach,” says Andersen. “This, along with strong user adoption, helped smooth the transition and avoid overwhelming teams.”

Martin Sams, CFO at Fellowmind Denmark, celebrates the successful implementation this way: “Using Dynamics 365, we’ve been able to consolidate systems and bring everybody together on the same platform, which has made it easier to transition from three companies to one working together.”

A unified solution streamlines project tracking   

The unified Dynamics 365 solution streamlines project management from end to end, beginning with tracking leads and opportunities. Once a deal is closed, a contract is automatically generated and flows simultaneously into Project Operations and Finance. Dual-write synchronizes project invoicing and accounting data between Project Operations and Finance in real time, so the project management team can begin allocating resources immediately. Sales and Project Operations share the same database, ensuring sales and project data is always in sync. As the project progresses, team members log their hours using a modern and unified time registration system in the solution.

Today, the company has better visibility and a holistic view of projects in progress, helping teams promptly address issues and keep projects on track. “Using Dynamics 365, we have full insight into all projects, from budgets to day-to-day tasks to tracking how many hours are spent,” Andersen confirms. “We can see the estimate in each project and any potential issues in deliveries. We are much more efficient. Now, teams across sales and project management can collaborate more effectively, with a common data model and shared access to project timelines, budgets, resources, and deliverables.”

Sales and financial processes are faster

Allan Rocha, Director at Fellowmind Denmark, agrees. “From a sales perspective, it is much easier to identify the customers and projects and measure how projects are progressing according to estimations.”

Integrating sales processes with project management operations and consolidating data access has saved account managers approximately two to three hours per customer every week. Both converting billable hours into invoices and month-end close processes are now completed 50% faster with Dynamics 365. The improvements ensure timely invoices and help Fellowmind Denmark maintain steady cash flow and allow finance teams to focus on other critical tasks, enhancing overall productivity. “It all comes back to the ability to spend more time on controlling and monitoring instead of doing manual work and manual tasks,” Sams says.

The right resources are allocated more efficiently

Universal resource scheduling in Project Operations assigns resources to projects based on availability, skills, project deadlines, business units, and geographies, ensuring that the right personnel are assigned and enhancing operational efficiency while increasing project margins. Andersen says, "With universal resource scheduling in Dynamics 365, we can easily see if we have a consultant in the company who has specific skills and availability for a project, and we can make sure we’re not overstaffed or understaffed. This is changing the way we do things, because we can work on projects more efficiently.” Universal resource scheduling has reduced the calendar time required to allocate resources from several days to just one hour. Fellowmind Denmark also leverages the Microsoft AppSource catalog to enhance its resource management capabilities with add-on solutions that improve the user experience, making it easier to use and adopt.

The transition from separate time registration systems to a single, consolidated solution ensures that billable project hours are properly recorded. “We have one place instead of three different systems to enter project hours, which makes the entire process more accurate and efficient,” Sams says. “We can invoice customers a day earlier as a result.”

Leaders can make more informed decisions 

Enhanced reporting and analytics available in the new system are giving Fellowmind Denmark unprecedented visibility into its business data. “We’ve consolidated our data across all our applications with Dynamics 365,” Sams explains. “Now, we can pull up an account and get a 360-degree view of what we have in the opportunity pipeline, what our current projects are, contract details, and related financial data. We also have some interesting reporting capabilities, and we can create advanced analytics on top of the data to help our management team make more informed decisions.”

What’s next

Fellowmind Denmark wants to harness cutting-edge Copilot and AI agents in the Dynamics 365 platform to make time entry and expense management easier and more intuitive and optimize core processes like Accounts Payable. The company also plans to explore the use of Microsoft Copilot in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric to further automate and enhance reporting and analytics. “We always try to explore new technologies,” Sams says. “We want to keep improving our processes to make everything more automated and integrated.”