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[Chris France]

Hello,

I have a question that may be difficult to answer. We are in the final vendor selection phase or our implementation.

We have 110 full users and we will have 40 to 50 device users. We are a process manufacturing company that does formulations and batches. Very similar to the food industry.

We hired a fulltime Project Manager that has done 25 implementations. We have completed process mapping and are currently identifying and cleaning master data.

Our project will be a full implementation: Finance, QA, Manufacturing, sales, customer service, Power BI, Shop floor data collection, Supply chain, scheduling, etc. Also core team training, data migration support end user training and go-live support. 

I would like to know if someone has done a similar project and the hours estimated by your Implementor. Currently we are looking at 7000 hours  for the entire project. 

Any responses will be very helpful. I have done three implementations, this is my first Dynamics NAV. Other project where custom, SAP, JD Edwards, JBA.

Thank you

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Chris France
Morristown TN
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[David Wiser]

For a base NAV implementation, the 7k hours seems pretty high.  A couple of open questions which may be driving the estimate higher which we don’t have a clear vision of:

• Are you anticipating much custom development?  Most try and stay with base functionality, but there will always be some customization.
• Are you integrating with any external resources (i.e. MES systems, payroll, EDI, etc)?  That can also drive up the estimate.
• How many master records are you dealing with (items, BOMs, routings, customers, vendors, etc.)?
• While the number of users is important, the number of differing roles is also important.  Will a lot of those users be using the same role/permissions?
• Just one company or multiple?  How many locations?
• How much historical data are you bringing over?

These issues may push the project estimate as high as you are currently seeing.

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Dave Wiser
Controller
Beckwith & Kuffel
Seattle WA
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[Rob Hansen]

If a good chunk of those hours are customizations around process manufacturing, you should consider one of the food manufacturing add-ons which would have functionality to handle many of your requirements.  SI Foodware is one we’ve implemented and continue to promote.

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Rob Hansen CPA, CMA
Partner
DynamicsPath
Toronto, ON Canada
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[Matt Traxinger]

Without seeing the requirements I think it would be impossible to say whether the number is reasonable. We can make assumptions based on past projects, but the reality is that customers are different, the people that work there are different. I have been on projects as low as 100 hours and going upwards of 20,000. Some are high on development, some are high on project management / coordination of a lot of ISVs. It’s all about the requirements.

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Matt Traxinger
NAV Developer
ArcherPoint Inc.
San Antonio TX
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[Alex Wiley]

I will echo Rob a bit – nothing in nav handles batch processing or QA the way food companies need it to, at all. There are several verticals that are good for that reason and I’ve worked with three of them, your biggest issue will likely be securing resources who are both NAV and industry competent. Even verticals sometimes need customized though, so maybe you’re better going from scratch. If you’re also paying for add-ons for Handscanners, Batch Mfg, and QA I would say that estimate is high. If you’re doing it all from base nav, then that’s probably right. Also your PM with that many implementations should have easily been able to tell you that….

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Alex Wiley
Haschen
Denver CO
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[David Machanick]

We have been integrating NAV with Vicinity for process manufacturers. It runs out side of NAV and uses web services for the interface.

Pros – it is a standalone package that focuses on process manufacturing and interfaces with ERP packages like NAV and GP.

Cons – it is not embedded in NAV.

Integrating with Vicinity has helped us keep our implementation costs down and NAV upgrades are not dependent on the ISV.

Without seeing your implementation plan and hours, all any of us can offer is general guidance.

If you want a second opinion, you will need to bring someone in.

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David Machanick
Sikich LLP
Garland TX
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[Dave Cintron]

Having worked on possibly 100 implementations (and more before NAV) I would say that if you have to spend 7000 making the product work, you’re buying the wrong product. IMHO anything over 2000 hours should be carefully reviewed for who is actually adding what to the project.

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Dave Cintron
Dynamics West
Ventura CA
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[Franz Kalchmair]

hi chris,

i have read many good thoughts here. It seems that you got offers with estimations for the whole project. In the last line you have a sum for all that, which is in the end the base of your decisions, how to go forward.

This approach is typical for many projects, especially the bigger ones. 

I suggest to go a step back for a moment and think about the whole thing:

* you decided to use dynamics nav as erp system. fine. why ?

* the big sum of hours let’s me think, that you need a big amount of customizations. is that really needed? did you or the project manager invest enough time to search for solutions, nav addons, which maybe meet many of your requirements? There are a huge amount of addons for every purpose available. Good start point: pinpoint.microsoft.com.

* do you have a nav partner, who has enough knowledge about your business and dynamics nav in general?

* this will be a long term project, at least 6m for the base processes, 2+ years for further customizations. do you have a nav partner for that, which will assist and guide you ?

* i suggest not the speak about a complete sum for all parts of the projects, but about milestones:
  – setup base system: main processes, the less the better (finance, manufactoring, sales, qa), data migration, then testing, testing, testing, …
  – supply chain processes, customer service, then testing, testing, testing, ….
  – go live
  – after go live support, additional customizations, testing, testing, testing, …
  – later needed modules: edi, logistic topics, BI, …
  – trainings
  – documentation (QA)
  – use an issue tracker system in common with your nav partner
  – calculate hours and money for each milestone, later for the bigger CRs
  – try to use agile methods, especially for the project management

cheers

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Franz Kalchmair
Dynamics NAV Engineer and Consultant
Microsoft MVP
Vienna
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[Devang Mehta]

Hello Chris,

I agree with most of the postings. 7,000 hours seems extremely high. Most experienced partners will typically provide breakdown on how the implementation service hours were derived. These should be broken down by functional area, and sometimes by installation, data migration, configuration, training, testing, etc.. in a manner that follows their implementation methodology.

It would not be a bad idea to get a second opinion from another reseller of Dynamics NAV. Also, I’m curious – how much in the way of customizations has been proposed?

Thanks,

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Devang Mehta
NAV Practice Manager
InterDyn BMI
Elgin SC
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