British Museum

The British Museum Company exhibit great judgment in their selection of Microsoft Dynamics NAV as the platform to build their IT future on

The British Museum Company Limited (BMCL) was founded by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1973 to support the museum and advance its educational aims. The company supports the museum by providing a number of activities including Retail, Publishing, Merchandising as well as Licensing services inspired by the Museum's collections.

The business has built on its long history of publishing by expanding it’s retail operations following the opening of the Great Court at the centre of the Museum and increasing it merchandising operations covering replica gift, stationary, jewellery and accessories.

Business needs

With the Museum's plans to open the new First Emperor exhibition in September 2007 BMCL set about replacing their existing systems in time for everything to be settled down before their peak trading period in the summer of 2007. There were two clear objectives for this, firstly to replace the core applications being used within the business with one fully integration solution and secondly to provide the platform to support the business into the future.

The existing systems had limited integration which meant duplication of effort in many areas. The reporting process was time consuming due to the disparate nature of the front of house point-of-sale (POS) system and the back office ERP system.

BMCL have also invested in e-commerce and it was clear that their existing systems did not meet the needs of the business going forward.

What BMCL required was one proven solution to cover all their needs. The solution had to be functionality rich so it could be used "Out of the Box" and it was needed to be flexible in terms of functionality and reporting to support change and continue to meet the future needs of the British Museum. Integration with their point-of-sale (POS) system and e-commerce presence was also critical. Another main criterion for BMCL was to select a solution, which they could rely on, to be around for many years to come. They chose Microsoft Dynamics NAV from Total Enterprise Solutions (TES).

Key factors on BMCL choosing Microsoft was it’s simplicity of use, familiar look and feel, and the commitment that Microsoft are putting into the Business Solutions sector. Helen Watts, BMCL’s Finance Director commented,

“Microsoft provides good value for money, good functionality and we expect Microsoft to be around for a long time”.

Solution

The Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution fitted the bill for BMCL as functionally fit was good in all areas. This helped as they were able to implement all areas of the business in one go. Microsoft SQL Reporting Services was used to harness the new level of data available to the BMCL and provide the management information that was lacking with their previous solution.

BMCL understood that by implementing the solution “out of the box” in the first stage would enable the implementation time frame to be kept to a minimum, to minimise the risk of getting the solution in and operational and settled down before the busy summer trading period. This would also allow the business to get a better understanding of the new solution before investing more money on functionality which they may not require.

The core Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) functionality was then enhanced through the further use of Microsoft SQL Reporting Services. The Dynamics NAV rapid development environment C/SIDE enabled TES to meet the extra needs presented by BMCL following the vanilla implementation of the core solution.

It was clear to TES that BMCL were looking for a partner who could listen to their requirements and work to ensure the solution met their expectations and fulfilled their current and future needs. TES set about understanding the individual departments’ needs while keeping in mind the overall business plan.

When asked why TES were selected to partner with the BMCL Watts said,

"People! It's as simple as that. We wanted to select a partner who would work with us and not against us. The people at TES seemed to understand our business best and worked in similar ways to ourselves. They appreciated that we had our day jobs to do".

Summary

The BMCL have improved the way in which they provide support to the British Museum in its aim to become the “Best Museum in the World”, at the same time re-enforcing their own status as a leader in their market place. Benchmarking themselves against high street retailers and non-museum publishing houses has enabled them invest best practices through the use of Microsoft Dynamics NAV from their trusted supplier TES.

TES was formed in February 2006. TES focuses on selling software and services built around the Microsoft Dynamics NAV platform and the complete Microsoft suite. This includes the core Dynamics NAV ERP product as well as complementary technologies such as SQL Server 2005, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and SharePoint.

Benefits

British Museum

Moving forwards with Microsoft Dynamics NAV reaped numerous benefits to company operations, boosting business productivity, shortening reporting turnaround time, and empowering executive decision-making. Staff accepted the transition well as the new solution met their needs, and they were already fully familiar with the Microsoft interface and ease of use.

Streamlines Accounting Processes
By integrating Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV with the point-of-sale (POS) system, sales information can now be posted directly into Microsoft Dynamics NAV at the back-end, ensuring data accuracy and eliminating the need for further manual calculations and cross checking.

Administration Efficiencies
Administration staff savings of 1 ½ people to date and expecting this to grow to 4 people by the end of the next phase

Empowering Decision-Making
Financial reporting is quicker and more detailed, with the ability to report sales figures by multiple divisions and brands. This enables more effective cross analysis of figures, which supports faster decision-making.

Reduced transaction times
Faster throughput of transactions, which saves time and improves productivity for users compared to the previous system.

Major move towards the Paperless Office
The company is greener through saving on paper consumption and physical storage. Its people have been freed to tackle more pressing problems than management of paper files.

Improved quality of data
BMCL can now rely on the quality of the data as it is cleaner, better and delivered faster data enabling the business to make better informed decisions.

Adapts to Unique Company Requirements
TES have enhanced the Microsoft Dynamics NAV functionality to provide tighter purchase order control, improved Cash Management and better visibility of purchase commitments.

For more information about Total Enterprise Solutions or its products please contact us on 0845 257 1173 or enquiries@totalenterprisesolutions.co.uk

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