Their challenge

Based in Illinois, TOPS Products is a North American leader in office products and organizational solutions. With eight core brands, TOPS’ mission is to make tools that empower people to live focused, organized, and creative lives. 

TOPS worked with another partner to implement Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management. After go-live, TOPS needed a business intelligence solution to consolidate and analyze data from multiple sources, including their legacy ERP, WCSS. TOPS lacked visibility into financial reporting, inventory, and sales. However, their Dynamics implementation partner couldn’t solve the data gap, and TOPS wasn’t sure where to turn. Familiar with our analytics experience and work at LSC Communications, an executive recommended MCA Connect.

Our solution

The MCA Connect team first conducted a data assessment to determine TOPS’ reporting requirements and if they should build a custom solution to meet their needs. After learning more about their requirements, we recommended MCA Connect Inspire Platform™, a modern analytics platform optimized for Dynamics 365.

Inspire empowers manufacturers to consolidate their data, optimize it for analytics, and make better, more timely decisions. With pre-built industry standard KPIs, and executive dashboards for self-service insights, Inspire delivers value quickly. The platform can also enhance any Dynamics 365 implementation, not just the implementations we lead ourselves.

After learning about the capabilities of Inspire, TOPS agreed the platform was a good fit for their business.

Results

The initial implementation phase with the integration of WCSS legacy data is complete. MCA Connect Inspire Platform™ is fully integrated with Dynamics 365, enabling TOPS to achieve the following objectives:

• Make smarter, faster decisions with data consolidated in the cloud  
• Get immediate insights with self-service analytics, out-of-the box reporting, and industry-standard KPIs. 
• Optimize inventory, fulfillment, quality, and cash flow in near real-time  
• Improve operational efficiency with better visibility into past performance and forecasted results  
• Streamline operations and decisions with financial reporting, AR/AP, and general ledger enhancements