MARKAN LTD. possesses seven subsidiary companies, covering different aspects of construction activities. Among those are research and design; electricity, water supply, and sewerage maintenance; maintenance of air-conditioning, heating, and ventilation installations; interior design, and many others. Thanks to its structure and its rich product portfolio, MARKAN LTD. gives its clients a full variety of services, which guarantees coordinated project execution and construction supervision efficiency.

Since its founding, MARKAN LTD. has established and handled intensive communication with many subcontractors and suppliers. This necessitates tracking and maintenance of a large number of contracts, each with specific conditions and clauses. The use of various non-integrated software systems in each of the company departments (Procurement, Finance, Accounting, etc.), as well as the use of separate databases, makes tracking contract execution a very difficult task. This time-consuming process takes lots of human resources and is a prerequisite for mistakes when obligations are paid.

Another basic problem for the executive and the operative staff of the company is the management of the warehouse facilities. This includes available materials in the main warehouse as well as materials on construction sites. Tracking their movement between locations is also difficult due to the lack of integration between the separate databases and the complexity of working with unfriendly system interfaces.

The biggest challenge for MARKAN LTD. is the time departments need to prepare and present precise and thorough inquiries on key performance indicators (KPIs). It usually takes employees from different departments two weeks to collect data from various sources (accounting software; electronic tables and even paper), and to provide the management with all the reports they need.

Facing all these difficulties on a daily basis, the managers at MARKAN LTD. realize that if they want the company to prosper in the future all these problems should be solved in fast and effective manner. That’s how the active research of the local Business software market begins. After thorough analysis of the available products and vendors, the company chooses the high-end business management system Microsoft Dynamics 365 with executor of the project Intelligent Systems. The reasons are that the preferred software and implementer meet exactly the customer’s requirements.

The process of Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation includes the modules Finance and accounting, Supply chain management, Warehouse management, Project management, Customer relationship management, and Sales management.

Challenging in this implementation process is not the complexity or specifics of the IT settings, but the fact that the project at Markan Ltd. is the first in Bulgaria to introduce a Microsoft Dynamics 365 system as a cloud service (IaaS/SaaS). This way, instead of investing in the creation of their own highly protected hardware environment, the client simply rents one that is expressly designed for this purpose. Besides the virtual SQL server on which the integrated business management solution is set, the construction company also rents the application itself. This way the company uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 functionalities through the flexible SPLA /Service Provider License Agreement/ license model, which gives customers the opportunity to pay only what they use. Being the first of its kind project in the country, the subject of greatest interest is the time the deployment process will take.

The answer comes a couple of months later when Microsoft Dynamics 365 starts to function in Markan Ltd. with data, successfully migrated from the accounting system used prior to the implementation. The project also includes a couple of services which provide not only wireless access to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP system, but also gives Markan Ltd. employees the opportunity to work with an Active directory and e-mail client through the cloud. The final stage of the deployment requires installation and setup of business intelligence (BI) solution, thanks to which the management instantly identifies problem areas on the basis of the data stored in Microsoft Dynamics 365.

With the full set of services that Intelligent Systems provides, the management team at Markan Ltd. can already feel a number of improvements in the areas that to the deployment of an integrated business management solution. The company now can easily plan and carry out new projects, estimate budgets and decrease expenses related to both tangible and intangible resources and assets.

• Improvement in the relationship with subcontractors and vendors and precise performance of the taken obligations
• Improvement of the communication, data exchange, and collaboration between separate departments, sites, and employees
• Automation of standard procedures and optimization of the company activities
• Assistance in planning current and future capacity in the context of the available resources
• Fast reactions when new trends and opportunities emerge
• Improvement in handling relevant legislative regulations
• Improved employee productivity and better allocation of idle resources to other projects and activities of high priority to the company
• Maintenance of up-to-date inventories and determination of their exact location throughout sites and warehouses

In addition, the management discovered many advantages of cloud technologies:

• Decreased expenses related to the initial investment in hardware, software, premises, and hiring skilled staff to maintain them
• Assigned the maintenance of data and systems used by the company to professionals
• Easily adapt the necessary IT resources according to the ups and downs in the business environment
• Real-time access to the newest business data, consistent with the role and needs of each user