About Client
Ultimation Industries LLC has been a leader in conveyor technologies and automation for nearly 30 years and has grown into one of the major conveyor manufacturers in the USA. The company’s core capabilities are built around conveyor technologies and automation systems.
Founded in 1988, Ultimation has a strong history of serving customers across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Its executive leadership team brings decades of experience in designing and building high-performance assembly line equipment, making them experts in conveyor technology and automation.
- More than 50+ team members and 1000+ customers and vendors required an efficient system to manage business operations
- https://www.ultimationinc.com
Project Background
The requirement was to move to a more robust and efficient system covering core business modules. The client needed a solution that was easy to use, manage, and capable of supporting existing functionalities along with additional capabilities.
Peritos helped align business requirements with processes, and Microsoft Business Central emerged as the ideal solution to migrate from the legacy system, SAGE-50 (on-premise).
Requirement
- Defined core modules during the initial requirement gathering phase to map existing business processes
- Integration with multiple eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce and Amazon
- Resolve taxation challenges where taxes were previously managed manually
Scope and Feature List
- Implementation of modules as defined during the scoping phase
- Sales: Quotes, Orders, Invoices, and Shipments
- Purchasing: Purchase Orders, Receipts, and Invoices
- Bank reconciliation
- Finance: Chart of Accounts, General Ledger, Payment Reconciliation
- Reporting
- Inventory management and item-based MRP
- Integration scenarios via eBridge for automated sales order creation and invoicing
- Integration with Avalara for taxation
- Migration of open balances (Customer, Vendor, GL accounts)
- Migration of master data (Customers, Vendors, Contacts, Items)
- Migration of open transactions (Purchase Orders, Sales Orders, Draft Invoices)
Implementation
Technology and Architecture
- System Version: Business Central online version with essentials and Team licenses for up to 20 users.
- Legacy System: Data was migrated from legacy system Sage.
- Enabled logs and ledger entries to follow accounting best practices.
- Reporting and integration with Power BI for better business visibility.
- Custom Coding:
- Convert sales orders to sales invoices
- Number series automation
- UI customizations
- Reporting fields
- Data mapping and integration of legacy system with Business Central
- Security considerations:
- Database encryption
- Multi-factor authentication
- Tokenized API endpoints for WooCommerce integration
- Permission-based access for user groups
Challenges & Solutions
- Migrating master and transactional data from Sage was challenging due to unstructured data.
- Developed an internal system for multiple data transfers and conducted mock go-live twice.
- Key user training ensured a smooth go-live and coverage of all business scenarios.
- Scenario-based training with checklists, video recordings, and user guides.
- Handled specific cases like placeholder invoices before actual vendor invoices arrived.
- Customized solution to update invoice numbers after receiving actual vendor invoices.
Benefits to the Client
- Discounted license pricing
- Free Business Central instance for more than 5 months during implementation
- 1 month go-live support included, plus 2 weeks extended support
- No cost overruns, maintained tight budget and schedule
- Access to Microsoft partner network with direct escalation for outages and high-priority issues
Support
As part of the project implementation, we provided 1 month of extended support, including major and minor bug fixes.
Next Phase
We are now looking at the next phase of the project which involves:
- Ongoing support and adding new features based on client requirements, including customizations and standard features like automatic reconciliations and invoice payment matching automation
- Planning to add another company to the Business Central instance as part of the group
- Implementing the warehouse module for better control over inventory movements
