Growth Outruns the Systems That Got You Here
Manufacturers come to us from three directions. A hardware startup is standing up its first real system and wants to skip the spreadsheet years entirely. An established shop has stretched QuickBooks past its limits and is re-keying the same order into three places. Or an implementation is already underway, it has stalled, and someone needs to land it.
All three end in the same place: production, inventory, purchasing, and accounting in one system that matches how the shop really runs, with the reporting leadership has been assembling by hand every month.
The four pillars cover the whole journey: the platform that runs the work, the IT that keeps the floor moving, the automation that absorbs the paperwork, and the certifications that unlock the contracts you want next.
All Four Pillars, Through a Manufacturing Lens
The same operating model we bring to every engagement, tuned to the rules and realities of your field.
An ERP That Matches How the Shop Runs
Dynamics 365 Business Central handles production and assembly, lot and serial tracking, costing methods that survive an auditor, purchasing, and the books, phased so accounting can go live first and operations follow without a big-bang cutover. A CRM keeps quotes and reorders out of the inbox, and Power BI reads live from all of it: work in progress, margin by job, and inventory you can trust.
Dynamics 365 Business Central
Dynamics 365 Sales CRM
Power BI & Fabric AnalyticsIT That Keeps the Floor Moving
On a shop floor, downtime is a missed ship date. We run the helpdesk, patch around production schedules instead of during them, keep backups and identity tight, and manage the devices that live outside the office: shop terminals, scanners, and the laptops that travel to customer sites.
Managed IT
Microsoft 365
Azure InfrastructureFewer Hands Re-Keying, More Hands Making
Orders flow from your storefront or reps into Business Central without a human retyping them. Paper travelers and tracking spreadsheets become structured, permissioned apps. The integrations between e-commerce, shipping, and the books run on their own and leave a record when they do.
Power Apps
Power AutomateCustom AI & Workflow AutomationReady for the Contracts You Want Next
Aerospace and defense supply chains ask for CMMC. Larger customers ask for SOC 2. We build the controls into the Microsoft platform you already run, so the certification that unlocks your next contract is an outcome of how your systems work, not a separate project bolted on at proposal time.
CMMCSOC 2How an Engagement Comes Together
Accounting goes live first: clean chart of accounts, migrated balances, and a month-end close that reconciles itself, while the floor keeps running exactly as it did yesterday.
Inventory, production, and purchasing come online in phases, with lot and serial tracking the system enforces and the ISV add-ons your niche needs named and priced before you commit.
The same team runs the helpdesk, the infrastructure, and the ERP, and shows up every quarter with the next improvement instead of waiting for something to break.
New volume lands on the system instead of on new admin hires. Head count goes to the floor, and leadership reads the business from live numbers rather than month-old spreadsheets.
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
Are we too small for an ERP?
Maybe. If QuickBooks still fits how you operate, staying on it is the right call. The move makes sense when the workarounds become the system: accounting in spreadsheets, inventory counts nobody trusts, and a close that never quite closes.
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 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.
Our current partner controls everything. Can you take over an existing system?
Yes. An environment takeover starts with getting administrative access back into your own tenant, then stabilizing what is there and fixing incrementally. A rescue almost never means re-implementation, and you should see improvements in the first weeks, without waiting for a big-bang cutover.
What is CMMC?
CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) is the Department of Defense's cybersecurity certification for its supply chain. If your contracts touch controlled unclassified information, certification is becoming a condition of keeping and winning that work. We build the controls and get you assessment-ready. One scoping strategy that saves small suppliers real money: walling off your CUI instead of moving the whole company.
Related Reading
Latest