Companial unveils Empowered: New tools and industry-focused solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partners

Microsoft value-added distributor Companial have unveiled a new set of tools and solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partners. The combined offering, called Empowered, includes industry-focused solutions for Microsoft customers and tools for Companial’s partners to improve their delivery and operational efficiency.

Empowered was conceived out of Companial’s focus on giving their partner network new ways to deliver solutions without requiring more skilled staff, according to the company. They explained in an announcement:

For many years, Companial has heard from its Partner community that availability of resources is one of their biggest concerns. Without the right resources, Partners have trouble scaling their businesses, struggle with differentiating themselves from the competition, and, as result, lose deals. Meanwhile, recruiting and growing talent takes years of investment with no guarantees.

Companial developed the Empowered solutions together with their partner ecosystem. At launch, the solutions include Empowered Business Central for Professional Services, Retail, Manufacturing, and Wholesale & Distribution. The solutions are available exclusively to Companial partners and designed to be bundled with Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Partners who sell Empowered will make an extra margin on the solutions and, Companial believes, it will help them re-focus on more high-value client work, according to product owner William van Voorthuijsen. “When partners are offering Empowered Solutions to their end customers it’s also beneficial for themselves as this will save them time [and] resource when compared to the situation where they would need to offer, deploy, and maintain those solutions themselves.”

The solutions are built and maintained by Companial based on partner feedback and suggestions, van Voorthuijsen told MSDW. The IP is “either 100% developed by ourselves, based on suggestions from partners, or we have acquired IP from the community,” he stated.

The first two Empowered tools are Empowered Billing and Empowered Insights. Unlike the solutions, the tools are designed for partners in any industry to improve their operational efficiency. Empowered Billing helps partners manage their recurring billing cycle and automate their complete CSP billing process, not limited to Business Central. Empowered Insights interprets Business Central cloud telemetry data to provide partners with insights into their end customers’ behavior.

"Partners share that the availability of skilled resources is their biggest challenge,” said Louis Rustenhoven, CEO at Companial. “Developing Empowered closely with our community is a way to empower our Partners to exceed expectations of their customers and add more value to these relationships without the need for additional resources."

The Empowered solutions are offered as bundles where the partner and end customer can choose which features they want to enable or not, van Voorhuijsen explained. Partners can also build additional IP which relies on Empowered, but the solution itself cannot be customized. “However, partners are free to deliver suggestions and/or IP to even enhance the solutions,” he said.

The company is also planning to extend the reach of Empowered into additional workloads, they stated.