4 Ways the Cloud Helps Mid-Continent Instruments and Avionics Ensure Business Continuity

Mid-Continent Instruments and Avionics makes a strong commitment to deliver aviation parts and solutions to their customers, who represent the global aerospace industry, such as medical emergency flight departments, cargo planes, and passenger aircraft. These customers count on Mid-Continent’s ability to deliver before they take flight.

They ship to over a hundred countries.

So, when the pandemic hit—and then a perfect storm of supply chain uncertainty, inflation, and labor shortages—that became more challenging, just as it did for millions of other businesses nationwide.

The good news: Mid-Continent has set itself up for business continuity success in this new environment with a migration to cloud ERP Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management.

Already invested in Microsoft Dynamics GP, the company had migrated to Dynamics AX on in-house servers. Then it came time to take these solutions to the cloud, which could expand capabilities, automate processes and enhance disaster recovery. After the pandemic hit, Mid-Continent wanted to upgrade to allow greater agility and modern functionality for support for remote and hybrid workers.

They moved to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management with the support of Sikich experts. They also implemented Dynamics 365 Marketing and Microsoft Teams.

The result of the move: greater business continuity.

Business continuity is a plan for keeping a company’s lights on in the case of a disaster or other unexpected event. A plan and the right technology in place can save companies millions.

A business continuity plan includes:

• A list of the essential functions of the business
• An assessment of the various ways a business might be impacted when disaster or another unexpected event strikes (it doesn’t need to be extreme, it could just be the power going out), and actions to take to mitigate those effects
• A guide for using the business continuity plan

For Mid-Continent, cloud ERP has played a critical role in ensuring business operations keep rolling:

• Uninterrupted work. Mid-Continent has a diverse team, some working in offices, others on the road and some working remotely. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management allows them access to necessary ERP and collaboration capabilities online so that operations continue seamlessly no matter where they’re at or what happens. Team members can also access real-time data when they need it.
• Quick recovery. If a disaster hits, Mid-Continent can restore critical data to any location to get systems back online quickly. Hosting their mission-critical data and applications in the cloud also ensures customer service and communications continuity.
• Greater security. One of Mid-Continent’s goals moving to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management was to increase cybersecurity. Cloud ERP solutions such as Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management are highly secure, fed by billions of points of data that Microsoft uses to continually strengthen its systems.
• Greater responsiveness to customers. To ensure customer service doesn’t wane in the case of an unexpected event, Mid-Continent is now set up so that customer-facing employees can get to the tools and data they need no matter where they’re at.

Read Mid-Continent’s story and the benefits beyond business continuity they’ve received from moving to a cloud ERP.

And reach out to Sikich today to learn more about migrating to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management and how the cloud can help your business continuity.