Disavè gets Business Central back on track with Professional Advantage

At a glance

For Disavè, business complexity comes with the territory

The Australian coffee equipment wholesaler imports commercial coffee machines from Europe, tests them locally, and supplies them to coffee roasters across Australia and New Zealand. Alongside its machine business, Disavè also supports a wide range of espresso machine brands through its spare parts arm, Espressobits.

Disavè runs all of this with a team of just 12 people. Between imported machines, thousands of spare parts, customised builds, customer-specific requirements, online orders, wholesale supply, and after-sales support, that small team manages 4,000 to 5,000 inventory lines, with every one requiring stock control, serial number tracking, order processing, reporting, and customer service to work together. It is a lean operation with the complexity of a larger one, and no room for systems that create work instead of removing it.

When Disavè moved to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, the goal was clear: move beyond an ageing on-premise system and create a more capable cloud-based platform for the future.

The platform was the right choice. But after the initial implementation with another partner, Disavè found itself dealing with the kind of post-go-live challenges many organisations know too well: manual workarounds, uncertainty around reporting, stock management concerns, and processes that were harder than they needed to be.

Professional Advantage was engaged to help stabilise the environment, improve key processes, and help Disavè get more value from Business Central.

“We knew Business Central could handle what we were going to throw at it,”

Annette Gillott, The Daily Grind Supervisor at Disavè.

“We just needed the right people to help us accomplish it.”

A complex business built around precision

Disavè’s operating model is not a simple buy-and-sell environment.

The company imports container loads of commercial coffee machines, completes local testing, and supplies customers across Australia and New Zealand. For one of its machine lines, the process is even more specialised. Disavè takes chassis from Spain, combines them with locally produced fibreglass, painted components, stainless steel work, and customer-specific labelling, then builds the final product locally before dispatch.

“Pretty much anything, any colour you can imagine, we can paint these coffee machines and put their own labels on”

That level of customisation is a strength for the business. But it also creates operational complexity. Disavè needs to track raw materials, work in progress, finished items, customer-specific upgrades, and spare parts across thousands of inventory lines.

The configuration options alone are substantial.

“There’s so many options that you can have,”

“We’ve got pages and pages of upgrades and changes that can be made.”

Disavè had used Microsoft Dynamics platforms for many years. With Navision approaching end of life and the business preparing to launch the Espressobits WooCommerce store, it moved to Business Central to establish a modern platform that could support its next stage.

When the system was live, but confidence was missing

The challenge was not that Business Central lacked capability. Disavè believed in the platform and understood its potential. Annette and the business owner had done their own research into what the platform could do.

“We knew that Business Central was a very big beast that could manage all the tasks we were hoping to get done,”

“We just had to get them programmed. We didn’t have any concerns over the platform at all.”

The issue was that the original project implementation had not delivered the clarity, confidence, or fit the business needed. Over time, Disavè found itself dealing with processes that were harder than expected, uncertainty around how the system had been configured, and growing frustration with the way requirements were being interpreted and delivered.

“The developers we were talking to at that time were very much, ‘Yes, yes, yes, we understand,’ and then they would go away and come back with something completely different to what we had asked for,”

Even providing step-by-step documentation of what the business wanted didn’t help.

“It was always a long, long process to get there,” said Annette. “It made it very tedious.

This became particularly difficult around Disavè’s customised machine workflows. The business needed to track raw product as it moved through painting, design, assembly, and conversion into a finished item. But the system setup did not give the team the confidence they needed.

“It was more the stock management.”

“When we were taking raw product and making a finished item, we were never 100 percent confident that those items had tracked through correctly.”

The result was years of checking, double-checking, and working backwards to validate that stock had moved through the process correctly.

Financial reporting also carried uncertainty. For example, Disavè did not have confidence that its GST statements had been set up correctly, so the team relied on manual reports to validate the information.

“Before PA, it was labour intensive. We had to find our own workarounds outside of the system.”

Finding a partner who would listen first

When it became clear the relationship with the previous partner was not working, Disavè began looking for someone new.

The business spoke with multiple partners, effectively interviewing them to find the right fit. A recommendation from an employee with previous experience working with Professional Advantage helped introduce the team.

For Disavè, the priority was not simply finding someone who could customise Business Central. In fact, the business wanted the opposite where possible.

“We were looking for someone that took the time to understand the processes we were trying to manage.”

“Not necessarily going away and customising something but advising us how we could better handle it out of the box.”

That distinction mattered. Disavè wanted to simplify where possible, avoid unnecessary customisation, and use Business Central in a way that would be easier to maintain.

PA began with investigation, review, and triage. The team spent time understanding what Disavè was trying to accomplish, how the business wanted to work, and where standard functionality could support the process without adding unnecessary complexity.

The work was not a full reimplementation. Instead, PA focused on targeted fixes, stabilisation, and practical improvements. In some areas, previous customisations were abandoned because standard Business Central functionality could do the job when set up correctly.

Restoring confidence in Business Central

Since working with PA, one of the most important changes for Disavè has been confidence.

The business now has greater trust in the reports it runs and a better understanding of how those reports work. When questions arise, the PA team helps Disavè trace where information is coming from and confirm that the right data is being captured.

“We definitely have much more confidence in the reports that we’re running,”

“We’ve been shown how to get into the background of some of those reports. If we have any concerns, we can check where it’s picking up the data to make sure we’re getting the right things.”

For Annette, that willingness to share knowledge has been a major part of the relationship.

“I’m a little bit of a busybody. I like to know how things work,”

“Having someone who is happy to show that to me is great. It gives me the confidence to know that, A, they know what they’re talking about, and B, they’re happy to share that so I can self-manage.”

Turning customer requirements into a practical operational win

One of the most valuable improvements has been in sales order processing.

Historically, Disavè had to manually remember and enter customer-specific machine requirements. Certain customers ordering the same machine would routinely require specific parts to be added, removed, or changed. If the person processing the order did not remember the requirement, the machine could be sent out incorrectly.

That created avoidable cost and rework. Machines could be dispatched, arrive with the wrong configuration, then need to be returned and corrected. The impact was felt in freight costs, labour, and customer experience.

PA showed how to use Business Central’s customer-specific item setup so that recurring requirements could be set against each customer—parts to add/remove, and changes to make—with the system applying them automatically at order entry.

“I think the biggest change was the ability to process a sales order and pick up our customers’ individual requirements,”

“Previously, we would have to remember those requirements individually and manually type them in.”

“It has saved us hours and hours of time, and also a lot in freight costs and labour, so that we didn’t have to rework machines,”

“There was a good few thousand dollars’ worth of freight saved, and the same in labour as well.”

For a small team, this has also reduced operational risk. Previously, critical customer knowledge lived in one person’s memory. If the main sales operator was away, whoever stepped in had to remember every customer’s preference. Now the system holds that knowledge removes the risk of a machine being incorrectly configured and shipped out.

Another improvement helps the team identify when multiple sales orders exist for the same customer, making it easier to combine shipments.

“We’ve got a little upgrade that tells us when multiple sales orders are in the system, so we can combine them for shipping,”

“That’s really helped our customers reduce their costs on freight. We no longer have 10 bags going to one customer… we can pack them all together.”

A relationship built on communication

After the previous implementation experience, clear communication and responsiveness mattered just as much as technical expertise.

“They were very good at preventing me from feeling like I’d been forgotten and we were going to have to start again.”

The real test of any partner is not whether projects ever drift. It’s whether anyone notices before it is too late. Disavè has experienced both. With the previous partner, problems surfaced only after work was delivered, when it came back.

“completely different to what we had asked for.”

With PA, Annette recalled one project where the direction started to drift but she discovered it almost immediately.

“The way they kept me involved was what stopped it,”

“It was picked up very early because I was involved in the process. It was early signs that, if left unattended, would have gone off track completely.”

Because PA had kept her inside the testing and design process rather than waiting to present a finished result, the course correction was quick and inexpensive. For a business that had already lived through one implementation going astray, that early-warning system is the difference between a hiccup and a repeat of history.

Building confidence in AI

Disavè’s growing confidence in Business Central is also extending to its newer capabilities, including Copilot.

The team has started using Copilot in Business Central to generate product descriptions and marketing text for the Espressobits WooCommerce store. It’s a practical, low risk starting point that saves time on a genuinely tedious task.

“I’m a little more hesitant of AI than some people here, but it certainly is becoming more helpful,”

“Particularly with the WooCommerce webshop. Our product descriptions and marketing text is now done through Copilot in Business Central. We’re gradually building up confidence in what AI can do and how we can use it.”

Building for the next stage

With Business Central stabilised and delivering more value, Disavè is now looking ahead.

The business is considering a more substantial CRM capability to better manage customer communication, moving beyond the basic functionality currently used in Business Central. It is also exploring how to bring its sister company, Espresso Machine Rentals, into Business Central.

For Annette, success over the next 12 to 24 months is about continuing the relationship that has already been established: responsive support, practical advice, and help extending Business Central into new areas of the business.

“PA have been very, very helpful, and they’re always there when I need to reach out,”

“To continue on and be at the end of a phone is really what I need.”

From workarounds to confidence

For Disavè, getting more from Business Central wasn’t about replacing the platform. It was about configuring it around the way the business actually works and having the right support around it.

Today, the team has greater confidence in its reporting, stronger stock and order processes, less reliance on manual workarounds, and a system that can continue to evolve with the business.

Just as importantly, Disavè now has a partner it can turn to when new questions, opportunities, or challenges arise.

“I can’t ask for better support people than that,” said Annette. “The team at PA are really very helpful.”

Could this be you?

If your organisation is live on Business Central but still relying on workarounds, manual checks, or processes that do not quite fit the way your business operates, a Business Central Achieve More Review can help you assess what is working, what needs attention, and how to get more value from your Microsoft investment.