Adopt Vs Adapt: Are You Really In Control Of This Choice?
How politics, pressure, and precedents overrule your common sense
Introduction
Implementing D365 F&O comes with an apparently simple choice: adopt standard system features, or adapt them to your fit your needs through customisations. It sounds like a straightforward decision, doesn’t it? For many organisations, the starting approach is always the same: “simplify and standardise our processes, so we stay as close as possible to out-of-the-box features”. Spoiler alert — it never works.
In fact, reality tells a different story. Most D365 F&O implementations end up with a significant number of customisations, and not always for the right reasons. The decision to adopt standard processes or adapt the system often slips out of your control, driven by forces that have nothing to do with business value or technical merit. So what’s really happening here? Why is this choice harder than it seems? More importantly, how can you regain control over these decisions?
In this article, we’ll explore:
- The merits of adopting vs adapting, and when each of them makes sense
- The hidden factors that force your hand towards unplanned outcomes
- How to take back control, avoid succumbing to complete chaos
Let’s start from the first point.
Adopt: why you should change your processes
Your legacy system is probably older than some of your employees, with years of accumulated customisations and workarounds that made sense at the time. The result? A maze of custom functions and convoluted processes that nobody fully understands anymore.
D365 F&O comes with standard processes built on decades of ERP evolution. Microsoft continuously invests in new features and modules, drawing from experience across thousands of implementations worldwide. While the system may work differently from what you’re used to, there’s usually solid reasoning behind it.
Consider your purchase order approval process. Your legacy system might have dozens of special cases and unique workflows, some of which not practically in use anymore. D365 F&O’s standard workflows is streamlined, yet flexible with an editor that handles most cases efficiently while being much easier to maintain and use.
“But our processes are special!” you might say. Some truly are – we’ll get to those later. But let’s be honest: many of your unique processes are just the accumulated weight of history, not genuine competitive advantages.
Why changing your business processes to meet standard ERP features makes sense:
- Lower total cost of ownership (no development, easier maintenance)
- Cleaner processes with plenty of documentation online
- Faster implementation and simpler upgrades
- Easier scalability and standardisation across multiple entities
Adapt: when customising the system pays off
While standardisation sounds great in theory, sometimes customising D365 F&O is not just desirable – it’s essential. The trick is knowing when to adapt the system and how to do it without creating a maintenance nightmare.
Some processes are indeed truly special and unique. Perhaps they’re your competitive edge, built from years of industry experience. Maybe they’re required by regulations specific to your sector. Or perhaps changing them would cause such massive disruption that customisation is actually cheaper than process change.
Consider a manufacturer with a unique quality control process that is embedded in how they run their production orders. Or a distribution company with dozens of contract types, each with their own fulfilment terms, ownership clauses, and goods handling policies. In cases like these, the business case for customisation is clear and compelling.
But adapting doesn’t necessarily mean overhauling the out-of-the-box features. Standard functions can be extended meaningfully, while sometimes a light touch is all you need – especially if you leverage ISVs and third-party add-ons that can bring that complexity away from the ERP itself.
When customising D365 F&O to adapt it to your needs makes sense:
- Preserving genuine efficiency and competitive advantages
- Meeting regulatory requirements and unique industry requirements
- Avoiding massive business disruption when the gap is too wide
Factors that force your hand
So far, we’ve explored when to adopt standard processes and when adaptation makes sense. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: things are never so black and white, and often this choice gets made for you by forces beyond your control. “Simplify and standardise”, the guiding principle of every organisation thinking they will finally get rid of their messy legacy ERP system, loses credibility as the D365 F&O implementation journey progresses. Let’s look at the three main culprits that can derail even the best-laid plans.
Organisational inertia
History, they say, is written by the victors. In ERP implementations, it’s usually written by users who’ve mastered every quirk of the legacy system over the past decade. You may be aware of the most elegant standard process in D365 F&O, but if your users are deeply attached to their current ways of working, you’re in for quite the battle.
It’s not just stubbornness (although there’s plenty of that). End users have invested years in mastering the current system, building their reputation on their expertise. Now you’re asking them to become novices again. No wonder they push for customisations that make the new system behave like the old one – wouldn’t you?
This resistance often manifests as an endless stream of change requests. “Can we add this field?”, “We need this extra status for orders that are on hold, but not entirely on hold” (really, do you?), “The standard system doesn’t handle our special cases”. Before you know it, you’re building a replica of your legacy system in D365 F&O – exactly what you were trying to avoid. It’s like moving to a new house but insisting on placing every piece of furniture exactly where it was in the old one, even if the new layout makes no sense.
Stakeholder pressure
Sometimes the pressure comes from the opposite direction. Senior stakeholders, often with limited understanding of the technical implications, can mandate changes that force customisation. They mean well but, paraphrasing a common proverb, the road to a D365 F&O hell is paved with good intentions.
Picture this: you’re several months into the implementation, system design is signed-off, development is in full swing, and system configuration is ongoing. Then comes the bombshell from the board meeting: “We’re expanding into the Asian market next quarter, the system needs to support that.” Never mind that the requirements aren’t clear, or that this completely changes the architecture finalised four months ago. The message is clear – make it happen, don’t care how.
The result is a perfect storm of competing priorities, where the need to please influential stakeholders outweighs technical best practices and causes plenty of rework. It’s rather like having several backseat drivers, each insisting on a different route to the same destination. We can only drive to one place at once, if we want to arrive in time and with the car in one piece.
Resource constraints
Finally, there’s the brutal reality of constraints. You might know that this process is ripe to be modernised and optimised, but do you have the time, budget, and people to make it happen? Process change requires more than just technical configuration – it needs thorough analysis, design of new workflows, change management efforts, extensive user training, and updates to procedures and documentation.
When you’re already struggling with tight timelines and limited resources for the ERP implementation, the quick fix of lifting and shifting existing customisation becomes temptingly attractive. After all, it’s easier to replicate what you have in the new system than to modify ingrained human behaviour – at least in the short term.
This is how you end up with “temporary solutions” that become permanent, and “quick fixes” that create long-term technical debt. Not because it’s the right choice, but because it seems like the only feasible option at the time and something had to give. It’s the classic “we’ll fix it properly in phase two” scenario – and we all know how often phase two actually happens.
How to regain control
All is not lost. While these forces can seem overwhelming, there are proven strategies to regain control over your adopt-versus-adapt decisions. Let’s explore how to turn this challenge into an opportunity for meaningful improvement.
Build your coalition
Have you ever seen a new business application already hated by everyone on day one? That’s precisely what we want to avoid. The key to reducing resistance is involving stakeholders early – and we mean really early, not just inviting them to project updates where they can nod politely while checking their emails.
The earlier people understand what D365 F&O can do, the less likely they are to demand a carbon copy of the legacy system. Here’s how to make this happen:
- Identify and empower change champions in each department who know and can advocate for standard system features
- Create a structured process for gathering and evaluating change requests, making stakeholders feel heard while maintaining control
- Build a change management plan that addresses not just system changes, but the human impact of process transformation
But sometimes you just cannot convince people easily, therefore…
Base decisions on data, not politics
“But we’ve always done it this way” is not a business case. Neither is “because the boss man wants it”. To make sound decisions about (major) customisations, you need a framework that cuts through the noise of opinions and focuses on real business value.
Here’s how to create a fact-based decision-making process:
- Set up a governance board with representatives from both business and IT to discuss and evaluate significant changes
- Establish clear criteria for evaluating said change requests, including business impact, technical complexity, and long-term maintenance costs
- Create a scoring system that weighs benefits against costs and risks, so that senior stakeholders can easily understand and relate to it
That said, it’s clear that you can’t be rational each time. So sometimes you just have to compromise, because remember that you should…
Play the long game
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a perfectly optimised D365 F&O implementation. Sometimes the key to success is knowing when to compromise in the short term while keeping your eyes on the long-term prize.
Consider this approach:
- Look for quick wins that can build confidence in standard D365 F&O features
- Keep stakeholders informed about desired future improvements to prevent disappointment with initial compromises
- Plan for gradual process optimisation rather than trying to achieve complete perfection at go-live
This is great, but if everything else fails you still have an ace up your sleeve. Which is to…
Bring in independent experts
Sometimes an outside perspective is the most effective way to cut through internal politics and preconceptions. Independent experts can provide unbiased assessment and validation, helping you make better decisions about your D365 F&O solution, whether it’s a meaningful customisation or a process adjustment (or a mix of both!).
Independent expertise can bring to the table:
- Objective assessment of customisation requests based on experience with similar implementations
- Fresh perspective on business processes that might benefit from standardisation
- Support in building business cases for or against specific customisations, with guidance on future-proofing your decisions
Conclusion
The choice between adopting standard processes and adapting D365 F&O through customisation is rarely as straightforward as it first appears. While the mantra of “simplify and standardise” sounds great in theory, the reality is often more complex, influenced by organisational dynamics, political pressures, and practical constraints that can force your hand.
The key is to make informed decisions that balance genuine business needs with technical sustainability, ensuring that all stakeholders understand this reasoning and are involved in the implementation project.
This requires a combination of:
- Clear governance to evaluate customisation requests
- Strong change management to support process transformation
- Realistic planning that acknowledges both short-term needs and long-term goals
- Independent expertise to validate your assumptions and guide your decisions
You will never manage to plan everything in advance with a D365 F&O implementation. Invariably, things will turn out to be more complicated than expected — this is not scaremongering, it’s the reality we have seen over and over again, after many years in the industry.
So if you need some support, or if you’re dealing with the consequences of tricky customisations or processes that are still convoluted after you’re live with D365 F&O, reach out to us. We know exactly how to help you.
