Why Business Process Documentation is Key to Microsoft D365 ERP Implementation Success

When you and your team are hard at work trying to make your company grow, documentation is often one of the first things to fall by the wayside. After all, business processes take enough energy and resources. Who has time to then document those processes? But when you operate on “tribal knowledge” that only exists in team members’ heads, you walk a high wire. You may be able to stay balanced for a while, but when one of those resources leaves the company, it’s like a gale-force gust of wind blowing through. When it comes to Dynamics 365 (D365) ERP implementation success, without documented processes, you risk letting the entire project fall apart.

Documentation is Key for D365 ERP Implementation Success

Successful implementation requires widespread adoption, and that’s a tough ask when users don’t have the information they need to make the system work for them. If everyone is using it differently, that means some people are using it inefficiently or ineffectively, making it that much harder to evaluate the actual impact of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 solution and find opportunities for broad improvement.

By documenting key processes, users get the guidance they need to thrive, and you’ll get the consistency you need to make implementation and adoption as successful as possible.

Here are three ways to ensure that you can create genuinely useful ERP process documentation:

1. Make documentation a top priority. When documentation isn’t assigned to anyone, it naturally ends up at the bottom of everyone’s checklist, which means it might not get done at all. Instead, choose an ERP expert (or a panel of experts) to take the lead on documentation. It’s an important job, so it should be treated as such.
2. Identify your most vital processes for documentation. What are your organization’s most-repeated ERP tasks? And which features are likely to be used in performing those tasks? The person or team that owns documentation should gather information from end-users across the company to determine which processes should be documented first to have the greatest impact.
3. Get user input throughout the documentation process. As you develop your documentation, ask for feedback from users and super users from all relevant departments to make sure it’s clear, accurate, and usable. A careful revision is likely to not only sharpen the writing, but also uncover unexpected ways to enhance the processes themselves.

Use Documentation for Test Cases

Once you’ve clearly documented a process, use it to create test cases that allow users to run through the process and determine if the system is working as expected. This is key to measuring your D365 solution’s overall effectiveness and targeting areas for improvement.

Test cases should:

• Start from the beginning. Users may not know how to get to a specific screen, so make it easy for them by always starting at the home page and directing them to the screen where they’ll be performing a particular function. This will also make it easy to turn your user test cases into automated ones.
• Focus on one functionality. Don’t overwhelm your users with a time-consuming test case. Rather than making them test the entire procure-to-pay process, for example, you should focus the test case on one element, such as invoicing.
• Consider the end-user’s perspective. What is the specific, real-life job function that the process you’re testing will support? If your documentation and test cases are too conceptual, your users may struggle to see the point. Make sure test cases align with specific business scenarios so users don’t have to make the connection themselves. This will also provide traceability and links between the test case and business process work items.
• Include expected results. What should happen when correct information is entered, and what will it look like if incorrect information is entered instead? Give users both outcomes so that they won’t be surprised and left to puzzle out the results themselves.

Get Help From an D365 ERP Implementation Partner

Not sure how you’ll manage to document your business processes on top of everything else you have to do? By partnering with Sikich, you’ll have access to our team of D365 ERP implementation experts, who can assist you with every step of the journey towards success. Reach out today.