An employee-owned engineering, testing, and inspection firm connects field work to payroll and the invoice

Process gaps stood between the firm and its growth plan

The firm is owned by its employees. Its engineers and field technicians test materials and inspect work on job sites, from offices across the Upper Midwest.

It was moving off outdated systems onto Dynamics 365. Its leaders found process gaps in that implementation, and those gaps would hold back the firm’s long-term growth plan.

Its leaders chose a partner that would give candid advice

They picked an engagement led by a solution architect over larger, multi-cloud integrators. They wanted clear reasoning behind each recommendation and senior technical judgment on each decision.

That candor included pushback. When a specific request wouldn’t serve the long-term plan, the architect said so.

A review of the whole operation set the order of the work

The firm’s leaders started with an assessment of how the operation runs, from the job site through projects to finance. It found discrepancies and brought processes in line with best practice.

It ended in a detailed roadmap with recommendations, so the leadership team could decide what to fix first.

Field work, projects, and finance now share one record

The firm replaced its outdated systems with Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, and Field Service, connected with Project Operations. A technician’s work order, the project it belongs to, and the costs behind it sit in one connected record.

In 2025 the firm connected payroll and time as well. Invoice data now stays in sync across finance, field service, and projects, so billing works from the same record.

Standard features keep the cost of running it down

The firm runs finance, supply chain, and project management on standard Dynamics 365 features, with no custom enhancements. That keeps the system efficient and cost-effective to run, with no custom code to maintain.

The firm’s own people learned the system, with senior support behind them

Workshops and best-practice sessions put the know-how with the firm’s own people. Ongoing managed support covers all four apps, so the team has senior help when something needs a fix.

Ludia’s part: a solution architect led the operations assessment and gave the candid advice. Ludia worked with the firm’s leaders and the Microsoft FastTrack↗ team and ran the workshops. It built the payroll and time integration and supports all four apps through Ludia Care, its managed services.

For your IT team: what connects the apps

Finance and Supply Chain Management are integrated with Field Service and Project Operations, and invoice data syncs through dual-write. Payroll and time are integrated with the firm’s payroll system. The configuration uses standard features only, and the assessment measured each process against best practice.