Case Studies

D365 Assessment, Governance Review & Transformation Roadmap

3 minute read

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A new CFO joined a food and beverage distribution organization and wanted to determine whether their current finance challenges stemmed from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (D365 F&O), business processes, governance, or organizational structure. Catena Solutions conducted an assessment, identified 128 improvement opportunities, and developed a transformation roadmap to strengthen financial controls, improve reporting, and maximize the company’s D365 investment.

The Challenge: Understanding Root Causes of Operational & Reporting Gaps

A newly appointed CFO joined a food and beverage distribution organization and quickly identified opportunities to improve finance operations, reporting capabilities, cost accounting practices, governance controls, and ERP utilization. Having worked before in highly mature ERP environments, he recognized that D365 could support the organization’s needs but questioned whether existing processes, controls, and reporting structures were being fully leveraged.

The challenge wasn’t determining whether D365 should be replaced. Instead, the organization wanted to understand what was causing the limitations and how to fix them.

Key pain points included:

• Limited visibility into whether D365 was being fully utilized
• Reporting challenges across approximately 15 legal entities and complex intercompany accounting
• Procure-to-pay governance and approval inconsistencies
• Cost accounting limitations affecting inventory visibility and profitability reporting
• Master data governance challenges across customers, vendors, and operational entities
• Limited user documentation, structured training, and reliance on key personnel for institutional knowledge

While D365 was viewed as a capable platform, leadership needed objective insight into whether challenges stemmed from people, process, governance, or untapped system capabilities before investing in future optimization efforts.

The Solution: D365-Enabled Finance Operating Model Assessment

Catena conducted a six-week assessment of the organization’s finance operating model and supporting D365 environment. The engagement included reviews of:

• Order-to-Cash (O2C)
• Procure-to-Pay (P2P)
• Record-to-Report (R2R)
• Costing & Inventory
• Treasury
• Master Data & Controls

The assessment also covered organizational structure, segregation of duties, master data management practices, training documentation, and supporting technologies integrated with the ERP environment.

Deliverables included:

• Current State Assessment
• Process and System Gap Analysis
• Quick Win Recommendations
• Governance and Organizational Recommendations
• Prioritized Remediation Backlog
• Execution Phase Roadmap
• High-Level Transformation Plan
• Resource and Delivery Recommendations

Consultant Expertise: Finance Transformation Meets D365 Experience

Catena’s consultant combined deep D365 expertise with extensive finance transformation experience, distinguishing true system limitations from issues rooted in configuration, process design, or user adoption.

One challenge was organizing a broad set of findings into an actionable plan. Catena prioritized recommendations by business impact, implementation complexity, and organizational readiness, allowing leadership to focus first on the highest-value opportunities while building a practical, phased roadmap.

“The assessment findings were very well received by our stakeholders, and the assessment provided us with enough information and actionable recommendations to begin moving forward with implementation,” said the client’s Finance Leadership team.

The Benefit: A Roadmap for Finance & Operational Transformation

The assessment provided leadership with a clear understanding of current-state capabilities, associated risks, and future-state improvement opportunities.

The assessment enabled the organization to:

• Identify and prioritize 128 improvement opportunities across Finance, Operations, Treasury, Procurement, Customer Management, Reporting, Security, Data Governance, and Technology
• Establish a structured framework for evaluating risk, effort, business impact, and implementation sequencing
• Identify high-value quick wins capable of delivering immediate benefits
• Develop a phased 6–9-month transformation roadmap aligned to business priorities
• Create a foundation for future optimization and modernization initiatives

Catena’s work positioned the organization to:

• Improve financial close, reconciliation, and intercompany processes
• Strengthen governance, approval workflows, and segregation-of-duties controls
• Reduce reliance on spreadsheets and manual reporting processes
• Improve reporting visibility across legal entities and business functions
• Enhance costing accuracy and profitability reporting
• Improve inventory transparency and operational controls
• Strengthen master data governance and ownership
• Increase utilization of Microsoft Dynamics 365 capabilities
• Create a scalable foundation for future transformation initiatives

“This has been a really important step in our path. It’s exactly what we needed,” said the client.