Transcript of Inolex Customer Testimonial Video

[00:00] My name is Eric Davis. I am the Senior Business Systems Director at Inolex. I am responsible for the IT operations, application development, and cybersecurity.

[00:08] Inolex is a manufacturing company responsible for making ingredients for the personal care product industry. We have a main office in Philadelphia devoted to R&D and administration, and we have a flagship manufacturing location in Charlotte, North Carolina.

[00:26] Inolex uses Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain. So we have a team of people working on both the finance operations using AP and AR. We have supply chain with inventory management, master planning, and many of our manufacturing routing and supply chain operations.

[00:46] The training challenges that Inolex faced were primarily around the diverse expertise required in many of the areas of both the industry specific actions and the details of the application. So, with a small IT group, we were challenged from a resource standpoint and we were looking for ways in which we could reach out and be able to provide expertise and training in the areas of both supply chain and finance to help our extended teams.

[01:17] My name is Anthony Bracco and I am a business analyst for my company Inolex.

[01:23] I think the micro courses are great. Our users really enjoy it and appreciate it because they can tailor it into their busy schedule. That is always the pushback and challenge that we have for any type of training is how do they find the time, how can they fit this in their schedule. So the micro courses allow them to make it work for them on that given day. So far it has been working great both from my side as an administrator and the feedback we have gotten from the users.

[01:48] It (learning path) has been working great. We normally start out the users with the kind of core fundamental navigating Dynamics and then depending on whatever department they are in, we focus in on those learning paths that are relevant to their work. It has been great. It has been helpful as an administrator as well to remember where we are. I am not needing to keep track of too many different learning paths and it has made it easier also if there is a user who is perhaps more advanced and they are going to maybe get a little bit ahead from the rest of the group. It is easy to find that learning path that's still in their general area of Dynamics, but to assign that to them additionally.

[02:28] The assessments have worked very well for us. One of the department’s managers also used the assessments a little bit differently and it worked out very well for her group. Basically what we did is had her group begin by taking assessment even before any of the micro courses and based on that kind of placed them in kind of beginner, intermediate, advanced learning paths based on their results from the assessment.

[02:59] With the IT team at Inolex working with business departments, the metrics (dashboards) that the training provided allowed us to have constructive conversations with that business process owner. So the business process owner could talk to their team and encourage training where it is lacking or we can talk about other training that may be needed if it was being missed.

[03:19] The pay-as-you-go model allows a structured and accountable role in training. It forces us to be more intentional in our training so that we are tracking costs and making sure that we are being intentional on where training is being used. The pay-as-you-go model also allows us to scale up and scale back depending on what projects are actually being active in the organization without having to be committed to long-term contracts and not getting value out of that.

[03:51] Biggest positive feedback that I've received from especially the department leaders has been: There is features and dynamics that we are not currently using in our business processes and it has sparked some ideas for them. Like, Hey, we really should be using this. A very simple one is cases.  Right now, we are not utilizing cases in Dynamics right now and our customer service team, through their training, learning how cases work (a very simple function), they said we should totally be using this. And that is one of the things we are going to be looking to do probably this year still.

[04:30] One of the things that we are going to actually start doing with the Item by Item curriculum is we are going to start having it as part of our onboarding process. So far that has been the biggest strength for us personally. We can go much more advanced I think, than we are currently going, but for right now, especially for new employees, it has been fantastic and we are going to begin using it as part of our company's onboarding process if that role is not Dynamics at all.

[05:01] So the out-of-the-box training aligns with the way that Inolex rolls out Dynamics. We try to stay in the box as best we can for the deployment, and we drive our customers to use those processes so that we can get the expected outcomes. We encourage our team members to play and find efficient ways to use the product, but starting users out with the certified best process usually gives the best experience for our team.

[05:31] I would definitely recommend IBI training to any other company engaging in the Dynamics platform. It is definitely a tool that can be picked up quickly and be utilized by teams to upskill their teams so that they're ready for the next Dynamic challenge that they have.