Watch the story behind Vend’s Dynamics 365 partnership with Columbus
Hear how Vend and Columbus worked together to deliver a complex Dynamics 365 ERP and CRM rollout across multiple companies and countries, creating a stronger foundation for reporting, automation and future growth.
The challenge: Creating shared platforms to secure new growth opportunities
When companies merge, the potential for business growth expands. So do the challenges of ensuring and controlling the growth. When companies separate into different entities, the same issues arise. This is what happened with Vend, a leading Nordic operator of online marketplaces. Vend was part of the Schibsted media group until 2024, when the group decided to split into two; Vend and Schibsted. At the time of the split, the group comprised more than 85 companies.
For Vend, one of its biggest challenges after the split was to align systems between its own group companies, supporting process integration, improved use and sharing of data, and all-round efficiencies across the companies. The initial focal point was the financial side of the business before addressing customer-focused and marketing issues such as segmentation, marketing automation, and sales processes. Vend adopted a Microsoft-first approach to modernising both its ERP and CRM landscape.
The partnership is born
When the split took place, many processes were fundamentally different across Vend’s companies’ brands and physical locations. A number of critical business processes were operating in silos and not as a joined-up organisation. To build one shared foundation, Vend had prioritised getting to grips with creating a new ERP environment to achieve a seamless flow of data between companies. This would enable them to gain the efficiencies that a closer connection between the companies would produce.
Vend chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance platform, integrated with ExFlow from SignUp Software (an independent software vendor), and AMC Banking as a solution for managing bank accounts across its companies. Complex integrations were required. Vend began the project with another partner, completing the initial phase of the transformation before moving into a more complex stage of delivery. As new challenges emerged, Vend looked for additional support to help manage the scale of the wider rollout.
That’s when Vend invited Columbus to take over the project.
The company wanted a collaborative and proactive partner to lead the transformation together with its internal team and stakeholders. Columbus came with deep experience of working both with Microsoft solutions and the Microsoft team. As a member of Microsoft’s Inner Circle for Business Applications, Columbus is part of a select group of only 70 partners out of 9000 Microsoft partners globally.
Vend and Columbus had an existing relationship through a project Columbus had completed for Schibsted, Denmark. The project, implementation and integration of Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE and Finance, took place before the Schibsted/Vend split. It was started in November 2021, and Columbus implemented Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Finance within six months. This became the start of an ongoing relationship with Schibsted and paved the way to working with Vend when the business needed a new solution.
Laying the foundations for project progress
With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance agreed as the backbone for standardising and optimising financial processes across all business units and countries, Columbus and the Vend team established specific goals for the next phase of the project, helping bring focus and structure to the wider rollout.
The prime goal was to establish a common way for Vend’s companies to measure and report financial performance. This shared approach would improve strategic decision-making at a global level while helping each company streamlines its processes. Streamlining was important from both a business and an internal culture perspective; greater coordination across the group, while enabling sales and finance people to work together with more shared understanding made possible by a shared platform.
Vend needed to move away from manual and time-consuming financial reporting and order-to-cash processes. Dynamics 365 Finance represented the modernisation that Vend was looking for, enabling centralised invoicing and financial operations across all countries.
The journey ahead was ambitious, and promised to be complicated: Two pillar systems of the group’s business activities, ERP and CRM, multiple companies and locations, and always pressing deadlines given the consumer-facing nature of Vend’s activities. Vend connects millions of people through circular economy transactions every month. Millions of consumers rely on and trust its services.
The Vend and Columbus partnership faced two parallel challenges:
- Bridging the past and the future – taking over the solution from the previous partner required multiple handover meetings and regular liaison between the previous partner and the Columbus implementation team. Reliance and trust were core values in this relationship, as much as they are between Vend and its customers.
- Creating a platform for growth – while open and transparent communications were progressing, the new combined Columbus andVend team planned out the transformation journey. Together, the team identified the customised functionality needed to support the group’s specific needs in terms of a standardised financial template with processes, tools, and KPIs for group-wide use.
Planning for a successful implementation | Mission control
The solution was rolled out in four iterations, starting with a pilot across two Vend companies. This phased approach meant some companies were already working with the solution while later rollouts were still underway.
To keep processes aligned across the project, Columbus set up a ‘mission control’ centre. This was an operations and governance organisation for coordinating the varying strands of the project’s evolution. The approach allowed the combined team to keep the project on track and ensure constant forward progress.
Implementation – the practical goals
An integral aspect of the project was to identify practical goals to support collaboration and adherence to timelines by:
- Allocating and managing time and resources for further development of the global template
- Ensuring availability of dedicated resources for ongoing generic tasks
- Providing an escalation path to the project organisation for issues requiring deeper solution expertise.
Consistent operations and faster processes
Vend now has a standardised chart of accounts and dimensional structure for cross-entity operations. The entire group now works in a consistent fashion, and processes are faster. Vend uses Dynamics 365 Finance to simplify and streamline critical business processes.
Reducing the time spent on monthly closing is a focus area for Vend. Previous hold-up points have now been eliminated. Monthly closing, compliance reporting, regulatory reporting, automated inter-company bookings no longer require hours of manual effort and laborious re-checking across diverse legacy systems.
For order-to-cash, Vend is now able to create customer invoices directly in Dynamics 365 and automatically send them to the integrated third-party solutions (ExFlow and AMC Banking) for distribution. Payments are also processed through a third-party system, and invoices are automatically reconciled in Finance.
We have a high number of transactions, with many details related to micro-transactions on the marketplace. What adds complexity is our two-sided inter-company booking, where the seller also books the buyer. Dynamics 365 Finance automatically books transactions in the buyer’s accounting, which removes a lot of discrepancies and saves time.
– Espen Henæs, Head of Finance Systems and Processes, Vend Marketplaces.
“Until recently, currency revaluation was done manually,” says Espen. “In Dynamics 365, it’s a single click, which saves us a full day of work every month. We expect to reduce that time even more going forward.”
Next phase: Streamlining CRM functionality with Dynamics 365
On the sales and marketing side of the business, Vend had limited marketing automation and personalisation capabilities, and faced challenges supporting multi-company, multi-country operations with minimal staff. It selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Customer Insights – Journeys as its core business applications.
With Dynamics 365 Sales Vend has gained control and visibility over how it manages B2B sales opportunities, lead tracking, and order creation. Cementing the flow of data across the group, Dynamics 365 Sales integrates with Finance, supporting a seamless order-to-cash process. Dynamics 365 Customer Service also integrates with Finance to support inbound case management, particularly for finance-related queries.
Vend has also made a significant leap forward in terms of its marketing activities by incorporating Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys within its revitalised approach to CRM. Through segmentation and marketing automation, it can now send bulk email campaigns to more than 50,000 contacts, while building personalised customer journeys. With Dynamics 365 Sales, Vend can track sales opportunities and leads more effectively.
It’s business, but it’s also personal
Dynamics 365 Sales enhances our sales opportunity processes. Gathering customer information and enriching it with known insights helps us run more effective sales meetings and track leads in one place, from initial contact to closed deal.
– Will Normann-Dyer, Head of CRM, Vend Marketplaces.
“We use Dynamics 365 to build and send newsletters to targeted segments, sharing pricing information and other updates about our marketplace products,” says Will. “Vend is also integrating external data tools with Customer Insights – Journeys to capture browsing behaviour and use it in upcoming marketing campaigns. Dynamics 365 gives us much greater intelligence and customisation. This supports our personalised customer communication strategy and allows us to scale that up significantly.”
Unified solutions define the shape of things to come
“Using Dynamics 365, we harmonised all joint master data, so we have an identical setup across countries and legal entities,” says Espen. “Our finance operations department is fully cross-legal entity and cross-country, which makes for better efficiency and similar processes.”
Columbus helped Vend roll out Dynamics 365 in four waves without major incidents. This success was driven by a standardised global template, thorough testing, a proven implementation methodology, and ongoing support. Columbus adapted the global template for local regulatory requirements as appropriate.
Vends new global template allows newly established or acquired companies to smoothly integrate into a common financial solution with unified reporting. The company now has a single CRM solution for all four countries, consolidating legacy systems and enabling efficient billing, customer service, and sales processes.
A unified solution has also improved compliance and enhanced documentation for audits. In addition, the scalability of the cloud-based platform enables Vend to manage hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue with a lean finance team, while seamlessly supporting acquisitions and divestitures.
Vend’s mission is to deliver effortless digital experiences designed for tomorrow’s needs, creating sustainable value for stakeholders and society. The platform is now in place to support this. The Vend and Columbus collaborative partnership is in place to help drive it.
