Sikich aims to provide clients with scalable and flexible solutions that fit their needs and allow them to maximize the value of their software by reducing manual efforts, resolving process bottlenecks, enhancing the experiences of business stakeholders, customers, and vendors. All of which are optimized for regular updates.
We have implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 since early in its availability to the general market. We understand and appreciate its strengths and are also aware of its gaps. We exercise great care and discretion in deploying extensions and add-ons. Each modification, extension, or enhancement causes a maintenance overhead. This is less of an issue, but still an important consideration, when we use software tools from the Microsoft Power Platform, like Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. However, sometimes extensions and add-ons can be critical for a process to run as it needs to.
When it comes to our focus industries – industrial equipment manufacturing and wholesale distribution – we know that Dynamics 365 will typically address 70 to 75 percent of what clients needs. By using ISV solutions, we can often get closer to 85 or 90 percent. However, the last 10 percent can be as important to clients as they may be challenging to deliver. Even relatively small, recurring gaps can make a critical difference in clients’ experiences.
Sound use cases for Sikich intellectual property
To bridge such remaining capabilities gaps, Sikich includes a small number of custom modifications or extensions in HEADSTART deployments. These enhancements may make users’ lives easier by saving time or manual effort, reducing the likelihood of errors, or providing key analytics. Sometimes they help meet essential, industry-specific needs. Sikich is not primarily a software developer, but we offer a license-free, non-retractable set of useful functions—a suite of apps we call an Industry PowerPack. Just like other software changes, these are part of UAT when updates happen. Their practical value is worth the extra effort. We deliver test cases and task recordings for each of these apps and test them thoroughly before including them in our development backlog.
In addition to these extensions and the Power Apps and Power Automate tools we deploy, we have also built a suite of Power BI visualizations that improve on those provided with Dynamics 365. They benefit most of our clients, across all industries. Our current Power BI development backlog includes industry-specific industry metric charts and graphics, which we will release as we complete them. While we keep adding capabilities, we also monitor the Microsoft roadmap and releases in case any of our apps can be replaced by standard functionality.