Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Platform Lead

About the job

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Location

London & Kings Langley | 3 days in office and 2 days hybrid; travel to group sites around cutovers.

Purpose

Lead the move from legacy Dynamics NAV to a single Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central platform for the Pickfords group, then stay on as the owner of the platform you built. In the first year you will architect the solution and deliver it hands-on: the group chart of accounts, the migration strategy, the build, the test cycles and the phased go-lives. Once the group is live, you run and develop what you built: release waves, an improvement roadmap agreed with the businesses, the operational scope, group reporting, and a small team to support it all.

Context

Pickfords is one of the oldest and best-known names in British moving, with roots in the seventeenth century. The programme consolidates the group onto one BC platform in two phases. Phase one delivers the group chart of accounts and dimension design, the financial ledgers across the entities and consolidated group reporting in Power BI, with the first go-live targeted within months of joining. Phase two brings the operational scope onto the platform: job costing and billing, per-job profitability across every business, the integrations to the operational systems that feed the ledgers and the remaining migrations off the legacy estate. BC SaaS is the preferred target; validating the final tenant and environment architecture is part of mobilisation.

The role runs in two chapters. The first, roughly a year, is delivery: leading the re-platforming from mobilisation through phased go-lives and hypercare, hands-on throughout. After that comes ownership. The platform, its roadmap and the team around it are yours, and the group's wider Microsoft estate (Azure data platform, Power BI, a CRM decision on the horizon) grows around them.

Team and governance

The role reports to the Group Head of Finance, IT & Administration, who runs the programme day to day; the sponsor is the group chief executive and progress runs through a fortnightly steering group. Around the role: group IT, which maintains the legacy NAV estate and supports extraction and infrastructure; finance superusers in each business, who carry UAT, with business superusers joining for the operational phase; contract development capacity where the plan calls for it; and the incumbent support partner for the live BC environment. Data cleansing sits with the businesses. Group Finance owns accounting policy, data quality, UAT acceptance and financial sign-off. This role owns the solution design and the technical delivery, and after go-live it owns the platform.

Key responsibilities

Leading the re-platforming

• Own the solution architecture: group chart of accounts, dimension design, company structure, intercompany and consolidation.
• Validate the target tenant and environment architecture during mobilisation, with BC SaaS as the preferred destination.
• Own the migration strategy for Pickfords and the other businesses on legacy NAV, and deliver it end to end: extraction, transformation, opening balance loads and the reconciliations that prove them.
• Design the interim bridge from the legacy NAV estate into BC for the period the two systems run alongside each other, with the retirement of NAV planned as a later piece of work.
• Build hands-on. Lead configuration, data loads, test cycles and cutover through each phased go-live, and write production AL where the plan needs it.
• Design the integration layer to the group's operational systems and set the development standards: AL extensions only, base application untouched, and environment, release and upgrade management aligned to BC release waves.
• Work with finance superusers in each business on process design at the platform boundary; agree what BC does and what stays in the systems feeding it.
• Run each cutover in person: training, floor-walking, first-weeks support and hypercare.
• Direct any contract development capacity on the programme, and coach the internal people who will support the platform with you.

Owning the platform

• Own the run model: release wave management, environment and permissions management, upgrade testing, and the internal support model.
• Deliver the operational scope: job costing and billing on BC, per-job profitability across every business, and the integrations to the operational systems that feed the ledgers.
• Own the reporting architecture: the BC data model, the Azure data estate around it and consolidated group reporting in Power BI.
• Own the roadmap: a prioritised backlog agreed with Finance and the businesses, delivered in regular drops.
• Manage the Microsoft estate around BC: ISV partners, CSP licensing, and the partner relationships the group keeps for specialist work.
• Keep the platform current and controlled: extension compatibility across release waves, permissions and segregation of duties, audit trail, and the controls Finance relies on.

Essential experience

• Multiple full-cycle Business Central implementations delivered end to end, led from the finance side, including at least one greenfield chart of accounts and dimension design.
• A strong NAV and C/AL background combined with BC SaaS implementation experience; the legacy estate is heavily customised NAV on-prem and the target is SaaS.
• Data migration ownership on at least one implementation, from legacy extraction through reconciled opening balances.
• BC finance configuration in depth: posting groups and setups, dimensions, journals, approvals, permissions and the core sales, purchase and finance flows.
• Integration design: APIs and OData, and at least one delivered interface to a non-Microsoft operational system.
• Production AL: enough to set extension standards, review all code and write production AL yourself, with source control and controlled deployment through sandbox and production environments.
• Power BI against ERP data: able to define the BC data model and reporting architecture and build hands-on where needed.
• Experience of running a BC platform after go-live: release wave management, support, upgrades and continuous improvement.
• Able to explain technical and data issues clearly to finance users and senior stakeholders, in person and in writing.

Desirable

• Personally led an end-to-end NAV (or on-prem BC) to BC SaaS migration.
• Familiarity with the wider Microsoft data estate: Azure Data Factory, Synapse, data lake patterns and Fabric.
• Sector exposure to job-costed or project-based businesses (removals, logistics, construction, field services).
• Jobs, projects or costing module experience.
• AP automation ISVs (Continia or similar).
• Experience building or leading a small in-house ERP or BC team.
• Microsoft certification (MB-800 or equivalent).

Why this role

This is an end-user platform role with direct access to the day-to-day decision-maker and clear design authority. The mandate is approved and sponsored by the group's chief executive, and progress runs through a steering group. The design is mainly greenfield: a new group chart of accounts, a clean company structure and a phased rollout across the group's businesses, with the first go-live targeted within months of joining.

The design decisions you make in the first year are yours to refine and build on: job costing and billing, per-job profitability across the group, the integration layer, group reporting, and the wider Microsoft estate growing around BC. There is scope to shape and lead a small in-house BC team as the platform matures. xwwtmva Pickfords has been moving Britain for centuries, and this is the moment it moves onto a modern cloud platform.

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