Food Businesses Break Generic Systems
Perishable inventory, catch weight, lot rotation, rebates and bill-backs, EDI mandates from big retail customers: food is where generic accounting systems quietly run out of vocabulary. The workarounds pile up in spreadsheets, and the true margin on a load hides until month end.
Business Central covers finance, inventory, and operations, and a small set of vetted food-industry add-ons covers the rest: catch weight, expiry-driven picking, EDI, and landed cost for importers. We name those add-ons during design and quote their licensing before you sign anything.
Around the platform, the other three pillars keep a daily-shipping business moving: IT that matches warehouse hours, automation that takes the re-keying out of order flow, and traceability you can prove when a customer or regulator asks.
All Four Pillars, Through a Food & Beverage Lens
The same operating model we bring to every engagement, tuned to the rules and realities of your field.
An ERP That Speaks Food
Business Central with food-industry add-ons handles catch weight, lot and expiry rotation, landed cost for importers, and EDI with the retailers who demand it, across multiple entities and brands in one system. Reps’ orders flow into the same place, and Power BI shows margin by customer, product, and load while there is still time to act on it.
Dynamics 365 Business Central
Dynamics 365 Sales CRM
Power BI & Fabric AnalyticsUptime for a Business That Ships Daily
When orders cut at dawn and trucks stage at night, IT problems have a same-day cost. We keep the systems patched, backed up, and monitored around your operating hours, manage warehouse devices alongside office laptops, and answer the helpdesk during the hours your team works.
Managed IT
Azure Infrastructure
Microsoft 365Orders In, Paperwork Out, Untouched
EDI documents, customer orders, invoices, and certificates of analysis move between systems on their own, with a log of every step. The rebate and bill-back paperwork that used to soak up an admin week each month becomes a workflow that runs itself and flags only the exceptions.
Power AutomateCustom AI & Workflow Automation
Power AppsTraceability You Can Prove in an Afternoon
FSMA 204 asks food businesses to trace a lot one step up and one step back, fast. When lot tracking lives in the ERP and the records are enforced by the system, a recall drill takes minutes instead of days, and the same discipline satisfies customer audits and SOC 2 reviews where larger accounts require them.
FDA 21 CFR Part 11SOC 2How an Engagement Comes Together
Discovery names the food-specific gaps, the ISV products that close them, and their licensing, before you commit, so the quote you approve is the system you get.
Entities move in phases: the operating company goes live on Business Central while others stay on QuickBooks until they are ready, and history migrates only where it earns its keep.
One team runs the platform, the integrations, and the IT underneath, with support hours that match a business that ships every day.
Lot traceability is how the system works, not a binder assembled after the fact. When a customer, an auditor, or the FDA asks, the answer is a report, not a project.
Implementation Options
Three ways to start, depending on how much certainty you want before you commit. Estimates and rates are quoted in your proposal.
T&M Implementation
- The full implementation on time and materials, billed to actual hours as consumed
- A written estimate up front, revisited at every phase gate
- Design and build run in parallel: the blueprint evolves while early phases are already being delivered
- Scope stays flexible, with changes approved through a written change order
- Simpler footprints with a clear picture of their requirements
- Teams comfortable steering scope as the work unfolds
Fixed-Fee Discovery & Design
- The first phase of a full implementation, run as a standalone engagement with its own deliverables (we call it Phase 0)
- Current state documented, future state designed, and the implementation blueprint delivered
- A fixed-fee implementation proposal, priced against confirmed scope
- Deliverables are platform-agnostic, not tied to Microsoft or to us, and detailed enough for any qualified partner to quote a fixed fee
- The fee is credited in full toward the implementation if you proceed with us within three months
- Complex or unclear scope, where guessing is expensive
- Boards and leadership teams that prefer the certainty of a detailed roadmap and fixed-fee scope before implementation kicks off
Fixed-Fee Implementation
- Follows a completed Discovery & Design engagement
- The implementation at a fixed price, quoted against the scope confirmed in discovery and design
- Milestone billing tied to deliverables you can verify
- Change orders only when the scope itself changes
- Budget certainty required before kickoff
- Regulated or board-governed purchases
Support & Training Options
However the engagement starts, ongoing support takes one of three shapes. The same structure applies across every service line on this page; rates and specifics live in your proposal.
T&M support & training
- A named bench for the systems we build and run, billed hourly as consumed
- Training sessions and documentation, scheduled as you need them
- No monthly commitment
- Teams with internal owners who need expert hands occasionally
- A first engagement, before committing to a program
Flat-fee service-line support
- Reduced professional services rates for your implementation
- Unlimited application support and training for the platforms we implement
- A predictable monthly fee on a rolling commitment
- Proactive improvements, not just break-fix
- Teams that want predictable cost and continuous improvement
- Businesses where the platform is now how the work gets done
Fully managed IT & applications
Everything in flat-fee service-line support, plus the IT operation underneath:
- Our lowest professional services rates for your implementation, as part of a holistic ongoing engagement
- Helpdesk, patching, backups, and vendor management, run by the same team
- Security monitoring, threat response, and email security
- An SLA on system-blocking issues
- Companies without internal IT
- Teams tired of application and IT vendors pointing at each other
Frequently Asked Questions
What are these add-ons (ISVs) you keep mentioning?
Business Central covers finance, inventory, and operations out of the box. Industry-specific needs, like catch weight for food distribution, FDA-compliant electronic signatures, or distributor EDI, are covered by vetted add-on products built for Business Central. We name them during design, quote their licensing before you sign anything, and remain your single point of contact. You never call Microsoft or the add-on vendor.
How is Business Central different from QuickBooks?
QuickBooks records what happened; Business Central runs the operation. Once you need inventory that reconciles, approval workflows, multiple entities, or a month-end close that holds up, QuickBooks needs a web of spreadsheets and add-ons around it. Business Central replaces the web, and it scales without replatforming. We wrote a fuller guide on when to graduate off QuickBooks Online.
What does an implementation cost, and when do we find out?
Early, on purpose. After discovery we put a ballpark scope and budget in front of you, with no signature expected, so both sides know the shape of the project early. After design, pricing becomes a fixed scope. We present two structures side by side, a straight hourly project and the same scope amortized monthly with support included, so you can show leadership the difference and defend the choice.
Do we have to migrate all our history?
Usually no, and it is one of the most expensive line items you can buy. Most clients go live with opening balances and open transactions, and keep a snapshot of the old database for lookups. If a regulator or your business genuinely requires full history, we scope it eyes-open.
Will Microsoft's updates break things mid-workday?
Business Central and Dynamics 365 ship two release waves a year, announced months in advance. We review each wave against your configuration, test in a sandbox, and train your team on what changes before it reaches production. No surprise updates during the Tuesday rush.
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