The roots of retail chain Bunnpris go all the way back to 1830, when Ivar K. Lykke founded the company that customers now known as Bunnpris.
In just under 200 years, the product range has changed from millstones, fat products and agricultural goods to groceries. It shows how the family-owned business has repeatedly reinvented itself to prepare for the future.

Today, the company is a group called IK Lykke and consists of more than 360 companies, including Bunnpris stores and a number of property and holding companies. The group has a total of almost 3000 employees.

IK Lykke realised that their previous business solution, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, had become outdated and was limiting their daily operations, which turned out to be a significant problem.

"In the end, we were using Dynamics AX 2009 as a central engine with many integrations. It met our needs, but required an increasing level of maintenance and more integrations just to maintain functionality. It worked, but nothing new was happening," says Kristin Strand, IT Project Manager, responsible for implementation at IK Lykke.

This resulted in many manual processes, making it difficult to navigate between different companies and systems. It also became increasingly difficult to integrate new applications into the system when Microsoft stopped supporting Dynamics AX 2009 in 2022.

Scalable options with Dynamics 365

After careful consideration, IK Lykke chose to implement Dynamics 365 Finance as their new business solution. The choice was made to obtain a future-proof platform whilst staying in the Microsoft ecosystem, where Microsoft Power BI was already used for reporting.

Another important factor was the many integration options in Dynamics 365 Finance. They enabled the company to consolidate all their data and financial processes into one system, creating a more efficient and cohesive workflow. Dynamics 365 Finance also lets the company benefit from new technologies and updates that were previously unavailable.

"We quickly identified that it was important for us to stay in the Microsoft ecosystem and from there we could see that Dynamics 365 Finance gave us access to scale and adapting the solution as business needs changed."

Better overview and greater efficiency

With the implementation of Dynamics 365 Finance, IK Lykke expected to achieve a more efficient and automated workflow. The user interface and overview alone have proven to be a clear efficiency improvement:

"The usability of Dynamics 365 Finance has been a major upgrade. Navigating the system between our companies is much easier, saving time and frustration."

For IK Lykke, the overview across the group's companies is particularly valuable as it has a corporate structure consisting of more than 360 companies.

A wide range of manual bookkeeping tasks have also been automated, including posting incoming payments and paying incoming invoices. This not only freed up time, but also provided better insight into which processes were sometimes falling behind.

High professionalism and structure

“During implementation, Cepheo has proven to be an important and qualified partner,” says Kristin Strand and emphasizes a high level of professionalism:

"Cepheo's consultants have been competent in doing the job. Nor were they afraid to challenge our opinions and decisions when they could see better alternatives. That kind of advice is important to us," says Kristin Strand.

She also emphasizes the importance of skilled and dedicated colleagues, especially accounting manager Nina Nordrum and the team leaders in the accounting department, who have been an invaluable resource throughout the entire process.

Cepheo's structure and project management are also praised by IK Lykke's IT Project Manager:

"Cepheo played an important role in keeping the project within budget and ensuring that all processes were carried out efficiently."

Additional automation and new features

The next step in IK Lykke and Bunnpris' digital journey includes greater utilization of more features in Dynamics 365 Finance.

"We’ve laid the foundation in terms of solution and our processes. The next step is to identify what additional business needs we have and how Dynamics 365 can support them," says Kristin Strand and highlights Dynamics 365 Project Operations, among other things, as the next step that will contribute significantly to the business, especially at IK Lykke Group's property companies.

She also expects further automation of their processes: "We have a number of processes, which we started manually to ensure control, that have proven their value and are therefore ready for automation."

"With Dynamics 365 Finance and Cepheo by our side, we are confident we are well equipped to meet the challenges and opportunities that may come," concludes Kristin Strand and says that they look forward to continuing their digital journey together with Cepheo.