Folio3 Rapid Start delivers Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with a fixed scope, a fixed timeline, and pre-built configuration packages that remove the guesswork. No open-ended discovery. No mid-project surprises.
Most Business Central projects don't fail on technology. They fail on a decision made in month one: rebuilding ten years of accumulated workflows into a brand-new system before anyone has logged in. It feels thorough. It's the biggest source of blown budgets and stalled timelines in ERP.
Companies spend months custom-coding Business Central to behave exactly like the system they're leaving, paying five times more to preserve the 20% of processes that were never their advantage.
Traditional implementations spend six to twelve months designing a "perfect" system on whiteboards. Your business keeps changing, people leave, and scope drifts the whole time.
Mapping out your dream ERP before you’ve actually touched the software forces your team to guess. When those guesses turn out wrong, unwinding them after they are already built is incredibly slow and expensive.
While a custom build for implementation sits in design for nine months, the manual work, reconciliation errors, and reporting gaps you're trying to escape all keep running.
Rapid Start is Folio3's fixed-scope implementation for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It is designed for organizations that have already chosen Business Central and want to be live on a predictable date, for a price agreed before any work begins.
Instead of starting every project from a blank environment, Rapid Start applies proven configuration packages and a repeatable five-phase process. You adopt Business Central's standard workflows where they already fit your business, and consultants spend their time only on what genuinely differs.
The result is the opposite of an open-ended engagement: a defined scope, a defined timeline, and a defined cost, all confirmed in the statement of work.
Exactly what is included is agreed and documented before the engagement starts.
A 60 to 90 day go-live window with milestones you can plan your quarter around.
One agreed figure in the statement of work. Anything outside scope is priced separately, never mid-project.
A fixed-scope implementation is not only faster. It changes what the project costs, how soon it pays off, and how much risk you carry to get there. Here is what that means for your business.
The full price is agreed and documented up front. There is no hourly meter running in the background and no change orders arriving at invoice time, so finance can plan the investment with confidence.
Core finance, purchasing, and inventory go live inside the fixed window. You stop paying to run the old system and start seeing returns this quarter instead of next year.
A proven, repeatable method and standard workflows mean far fewer unknowns. Fewer moving parts means fewer things that slip, so the go-live date you plan around is the one you hit.
You go live on standard Business Central first, then layer in refinements based on real use. Nothing expensive is locked in early, and the system has room to scale as the business does.
Every Rapid Start engagement follows the same five phases. Scope, deliverables, and the go-live date are agreed before phase one begins.
We map your finance, inventory, and operational processes against the standard scope, then confirm timeline and price in writing. If Rapid Start is not the right fit, we tell you now.
Pre-built packages are applied for accounts, posting groups, inventory, warehouse, and dimensions. Standard reporting is switched on. We configure only what is specific to you.
Customers, vendors, items, and opening balances are extracted using Folio3 templates, cleansed, validated, and imported into a test environment for your review.
Two rounds of user acceptance testing with your team, role-based training for finance and operations users, and a signed go-live readiness checklist before cutover.
A controlled go-live with your consulting team on standby, followed by thirty days of post-launch support staffed by the same people who built your system.
Rapid Start is one of two paths we deliver. For heavy customization, complex multi-entity structures, advanced manufacturing, or extensive third-party integrations, our full-scope Business Central engagement is the right fit.
Rapid Start works because the scope is standardized. Everything in the first list is included in the fixed price. Anything in the second list is handled separately, priced transparently, and never added mid-project.
Chart of accounts setup and configuration
Up to three legal entities
Standard posting groups and dimensions
Inventory and warehouse configuration
Data migration for customers, vendors, items, opening balances
Standard Business Central reporting
Two rounds of user acceptance testing
Role-based training for finance and operations
Thirty days of post-launch support
Custom code and AL development
Additional entities beyond three
Multi-currency and multi-country tax setup
Advanced manufacturing modules
Historical transaction migration
Custom Power BI dashboards
Third-party system integrations
Change management consulting
Ongoing managed services (available separately)
Book a 30-minute scoping call. Walk away with a fixed-price project plan and a confirmed go-live date, or a clear reason why Rapid Start is not the right fit for your business.
Rapid Start delivers the most value when the business fit is right. It is a defined-scope engagement, not a custom build. Discovery confirms whether it is the right path before contracts are signed.
Rapid Start is priced as a fixed fee, not an hourly estimate. You see the number before you commit, and it does not move once the statement of work is signed.
Every engagement starts from the same standard scope. Three things determine where your fixed fee lands within it.
How many companies you run in Business Central, up to the three included in standard scope.
The number of finance, operations, and warehouse users trained and set up on the system.
Which standard modules you switch on, from core finance through inventory and warehouse.
Compare that to $250,000-plus and six to twelve months for a custom build, where the price rises with every hour and every change order.
for a fixed-scope Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central deployment.
The full figure for your project is confirmed in the statement of work before any work begins. No hourly billing, no change orders arriving at invoice time.
A well-run Business Central implementation pays for itself. It cuts cost, closes the books faster, and clears out the manual work that holds a finance team back.
Agriculture
United States
Folio3 Dynamics · Business Central Implementation
A rapid, out-of-the-box Business Central deployment brought the full project in under $50,000 and avoided the $250,000-plus cost of a custom build. Moving off a legacy on-premise system delivered reliable financial roll-ups and ended the hours the team once spent reconciling errors, while system-generated reporting replaced the manual spreadsheet close.
Total project cost, vs $250K+ for a custom build
Reliable financial roll-ups after go-live
Gold Microsoft Solutions Partner with manufacturing customers across discrete, process, food, and agricultural sectors.
A standard implementation starts with open discovery, configures the system from scratch, and prices the engagement based on hours consumed. Rapid Start starts with a defined scope, applies pre-built configuration packages, and prices the engagement as a fixed fee agreed before signing. The result is a shorter timeline, a predictable cost, and far less room for scope drift.
The scoping call tells you within the first two weeks. If your processes match the standard scope, we proceed. If they do not, we recommend the full-scope Business Central engagement instead, which gives us room to build around your specific workflows. We do not force a poor fit into Rapid Start.
Rapid Start engagements start at $25,000 for fixed-scope Business Central deployments and scale based on the number of legal entities, users, and included modules. The exact figure for your situation comes from the scoping call, and the price is locked in the statement of work before any implementation work begins.
The timeline assumes your team can provide a dedicated project owner, respond to data preparation requests within one business day, complete both rounds of user acceptance testing within the scheduled windows, and attend training sessions live. The commitment includes contingency for standard delays. Anything outside these assumptions is documented in the statement of work.
We provide data extraction templates in week two. Your team populates customer, vendor, item, and opening balance templates using existing exports from your current system. Folio3 consultants then clean and validate the data before import. Historical transaction data is handled separately if required.
Scope change triggers are defined explicitly in the statement of work. If a genuine change is required, we document it, estimate the cost and timeline impact, and present it for approval before any work starts. We do not proceed on verbal agreements, and we do not surface change orders at invoice time.
Every Rapid Start engagement includes thirty days of post-launch support staffed by the same consultants who built your system. Beyond that, we offer ongoing managed support for organizations that need continued optimization, additional module rollouts, or help managing Microsoft updates. Support engagements are structured as fixed-cost monthly retainers.
It depends on how far the previous project got. Our first step is an independent assessment of what was built. If the existing configuration is solid, we build on top of it. If it is not, we start fresh. Either way, the scoping call gives you a fixed price and timeline before you commit.
