A $700K Cost-Saving Program

Data already sitting in the system became a $700K cost-saving program. No new software, no outside project, no moonshot. Just a question nobody had asked yet. Here’s how it came together.

Flat Sales, Open Floor

Before I was a consultant, I was an end user. I worked for a company in the medical surgical industry, running Navision, the system that later became Business Central. Our products were made up of components: trocars, blades, towels, and a long list of others.

Sales were flat. Management needed a way to increase profitability, so they asked every team to bring ideas to the table. I went looking in the one place I knew best: the system.

The Data Nobody Had Connected

We maintained a set of generics in the system. These were lower-cost alternate components, and they existed for one reason: low-price bids. When a customer wanted our sharpest number, the generics were ready.

Here’s the thing. That data lived in its own lane. It had never been related to business we had already won.

So I pulled it into Excel and asked a simple question: what would happen if we took an item and swapped it with its low-price alternate?

The math came back in the millions.

Two separate lanes, Generics kept for low-price bids and Won business already on the books, connected by a dashed bridge labeled 'What if we swapped it?' leading to millions in potential savings.

Why the Math Wasn’t the Answer

A spreadsheet full of savings is not savings. Two things stood in the way.

First, not every alternate could be swapped in every situation. Second, changes didn’t happen centrally. A salesperson had to request a revision for each one. There was no “make all changes” button.

So the opportunity was real, but it was scattered across hundreds of individual decisions, each one owned by a salesperson.

Building It Into Navision

If the decisions belonged to salespeople, the tool had to be built for salespeople. I designed a system within Navision that did three things:

Showed the salesperson the potential savings for a particular item.
Made it easy to execute the change.
Showed the direct impact on both profitability and their commission.

A simplified system screen in three zones: see the potential savings, request the change with one button, and see the impact on margin and your commission. Caption: Click a button, get a raise.

That third piece made the difference. I could have built a report that told sales what the company wanted. Instead, the screen told each salesperson what they stood to earn.

Click a button, get a raise.

How It Played Out

Every salesperson was different, and the results showed it.

One moved a huge book of business from a loss leader to profitable.
Another had already optimized his territory for healthy margins, so there was less to find.
Others had mixed results because they struggled with the technology.

Year one: $700K in savings. The program lived on for many years after that, redesigned along the way for efficiency, ease of use, and speed of execution.

A funnel from millions in potential savings, narrowed because not every swap fits every situation and each change needed a salesperson’s revision, to $700K in year-one savings. The program ran for years after that.

The BC Dr.’s Prescription

Business Central can do what you need, if you tell it the right story and apply the technology to the business need.

The generics data was there the whole time. What was missing was the story that connected it to won business, and to the people who could act on it. Ask yourself what data in your system exists for one purpose but could answer a different question.