Case Study

ERP Team Lead (NAV 2016 & Business Central)

Our Role: ERP Team Lead

Our client

Polifilm Group

11/2022 – 06/2023

As interim managers, we took full responsibility for the ERP development unit of an industrial company with NAV 2016 on-premise and a parallel rollout of Business Central in the cloud for 8 months.

In addition to operational management, the focus was particularly on the balancing act between stabilizing the portfolio (NAV) and strategic development in BC.

Through clear sprint structures, intensive stakeholder engagement, and transparent release planning, delivery reliability was significantly increased. At the same time, we prepared the team organizationally and technologically for a complete migration to the cloud.

Initial Situation | Objectives

After the brief absence of the previous ERP team lead, the development department was without leadership, with a clear impact on release cycles and project progress.
The teams worked in silos, lacking binding processes for planning, quality assurance, and stakeholder communication.
Taking over interim leadership of 16 employees
Introduction of a unified sprint and release process
Implementation of structured backlog planning with stakeholders from Finance, Procurement, and Production
Moderation of Critical Architectural Decisions in the Tension Between Legacy (NAV 2016) and Cloud (BC SaaS)
Targeted knowledge development in BC (AL / VS Code / Docker)
Escalation cut
Objective: Temporary assumption of disciplinary and technical leadership, process stabilization, create transparency, bottlenecks

Duties | Responsibilities

Taking over interim leadership of 16 employees
Introduction of a unified sprint and release process
Implementation of structured backlog planning with stakeholders from Finance, Procurement, and Production
Moderation of Critical Architectural Decisions in the Tension Between Legacy (NAV 2016) and Cloud (BC SaaS)
Targeted knowledge development in BC (AL / VS Code / Docker)
Escalation interface to specialist departments

Key areas:

Process recording of previous Excel maintenance
Creation of a Target Concept for Replacement Processes in BC
Identification of Limitations in BC and Selection of D365 Field Service as a Better Solution
Joint architecture planning for the integration of both systems
Introduction of Field Service including Work Orders, Mobile Apps & Resource Scheduling
Interface structure BC ↔ Field Service (e.g., spare parts, bookings, expenses)
Training & Change Management for Technical and IT Teams

Technologies & Methods

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 (C/AL, RTC)
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (AL, Visual Studio Code, Docker)
Azure DevOps – Boards, Pipelines, Repository Management
Team leadership according to the situational leadership style, closely integrated with stakeholder management