Howard De Walden implements Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

Overview

In 2019, Columbus helped Howard De Walden implement and go live with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (D365 CE) to digitalise their operations and improve efficiency. After several years using a heavily customised ERP system, that had been modified to extend beyond its original functionalities, modernising their digital capabilities to D365 CE was key to their growth.

Howard De Walden also took advantage of managed services to enable round-the-clock support for their solution post go-live.

Challenges facing Howard De Walden

According to Craig Clements, Director of Operations at Howard De Walden, the business was “underinvested in technology and not well versed in change or tech projects as a whole”.

The system they had been relying on was in need of change. “It was heavily customised to perform functionalities that sat outside of what you would expect it to do usually,” said Craig.

These customisations led to further pain points as outlined by Craig: “Our ERP didn’t have inbuilt workflows and there wasn’t any inherent integrations to allow disparate parts to speak to each other”. This meant Howard De Walden were having to do extensive manual exercises such as printing lists every time a property came to market.

Howard De Walden's implementation journey

As is sometimes the case with large scale digital transformation projects, the implementation process wasn’t without its challenges. But we listened, we adapted and we ensured that our implementation approach would be successful for Howard De Walden’s goals.

“We were immature as a business in terms of tech projects, so we were on a steep learning curve”, said Craig. “Columbus worked very closely with us over the next six months to develop it [the solution].”

The D365 CE solution went live for Howard De Walden in April 2020. 

“Other than the typical changes that occur post implementation, the solution we received (in April 2020) is 95% the same now and works exactly how we need it to,” stated Craig.

Benefits

The nature of Covid-19 forced many disruptions, resulting in a significantly higher number of property voids in The Howard De Walden Estate than normal. Many properties were coming back due to people leaving offices, giving flats up and/or moving out of London.

“Typically, we’d be actively marketing 15 properties – at one point during Covid that was up to 108,” said Craig. “We were able to cope with that scale change very easily, but it wouldn’t have been possible without D365.”

Craig highlighted some of the benefits of implementing D365 CE:

• Helped Howard De Walden to bounce back quicker from Covid-19 thanks to their ability to manage a higher volume of properties than before
• Gain total visibility and better insights into their processes, allowing Howard De Walden to make more informed business decisions
• Improved business efficiency in terms of quicker property turn-around times
• Better quality marketing due to the website integration into D365 CE – for example, employees can now upload properties to the website themselves

The value of managed services

Howard De Walden opted to take on Managed Services, which provides round-the-clock support post go-live, as they felt they didn’t have the relevant know-how in house to support the implementation.

“Given the complexity of the product and what we were trying to do with it, it would have been inappropriate to do anything else than get Columbus to support us,” said Craig.

With it being a scalable package, they were able to take hyper-care immediately after go-live and taper it down over time.

In Craig’s words: “The service was good. Our PM was the point of contact as they’d been involved throughout the implementation. They were able to log any issues and it worked really well for us.”

Columbus as a provider

In the end, we were able to successfully implement D365 CE and digitally transform Howard De Walden’s future. This also came at the perfect time for Howard De Walden, as it allowed them to hit the ground running in the face of a global pandemic.

When asked to sum up the experience in one sentence, Craig said: “It’s been positive because it’s shown us the opportunities and benefits that using scale technologies can bring to our business.”

"Columbus would be a very good partner for anyone who wants to go on a D365 project", said Craig Clements, Director of Operations at The Howard De Walden Estate