dc AG: How Dynamics 365 Partners can scale mobile solutions with Reactor Platform

For Microsoft Dynamics 365 partners, customer requirements rarely stop at the standard system. Warehouse teams need mobile access to inventory data. Service employees need information wherever they are working. Production and logistics processes need intuitive interfaces – and some business-critical processes need to continue even when connectivity is limited.

Building and maintaining individual mobile solutions for every scenario can quickly become complex

This was also a challenge for dc AG. As a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central specialist, the company saw growing demand for mobile processes across its customer projects but lacked a dedicated mobile solution in its portfolio.

Instead of developing an entirely new technology platform, dc AG chose to work with BE-terna and Reactor Platform.

Extending Dynamics 365 without starting from scratch

Reactor Platform provides a foundation for building mobile applications and processes connected to Microsoft Dynamics 365, including Business Central, Finance, Supply Chain Management, Sales and Field Service.

For Dynamics 365 partners, this creates an opportunity to extend existing customer solutions without having to develop the underlying mobile platform themselves.

For dc AG, an important factor was the flexibility to adapt applications to different customer requirements while continuing to work within a familiar Microsoft environment.

Because Reactor works with AL development in the Business Central context, the dc AG team could build on existing development expertise rather than introducing a completely separate approach.

The platform's online and offline capabilities were another important consideration. Depending on the customer scenario, mobile processes can remain available even where network connectivity is unreliable or temporarily unavailable.

From one requirement to multiple customer scenarios

The collaboration soon demonstrated that mobile Dynamics 365 applications could address much more than a single process.

Together with Reactor Platform, dc AG has implemented mobile scenarios across different operational areas, including:

• Warehouse processes: supporting employees with mobile access to relevant Business Central information directly where work takes place.

• Logistics and forklift processes: bringing data and workflows closer to employees working across warehouse and logistics environments.

• Packing and shipping: enabling operational processes without requiring employees to repeatedly return to stationary workstations.

• Field service: giving employees access to relevant business information while working away from the office.

• Offline point-of-sale scenarios: allowing selected processes to continue even when the cloud connection is temporarily unavailable.

This flexibility allows individual applications to be adapted to the process rather than forcing every customer into the same predefined mobile workflow.

When offline capability becomes business-critical

One customer situation highlighted the practical value of Reactor Platform's offline capabilities particularly clearly.

During a temporary Business Central cloud outage, an offline checkout solution built with Reactor Platform could continue operating.

Instead of bringing the business process to a standstill, employees were able to continue working and synchronize the relevant information once connectivity was restored.

For Dynamics 365 partners, scenarios like this demonstrate why mobile applications are not simply an alternative user interface. Depending on the process, they can become an important part of maintaining operational continuity.

What we, and our customers, really value is the ability to run both online and offline processes from one application.

— Florian Neblich, ERP Team Lead, dc AG

A platform partners can build on

An important part of the collaboration between dc AG and BE-terna is that Reactor Platform is not intended to replace the partner's Dynamics 365 expertise or customer relationship.

Instead, Reactor provides the technological foundation on which partners can build applications for their own customer requirements.

This allows partners to combine their knowledge of the customer's business processes and Dynamics 365 environment with BE-terna's experience in mobile application technology.

For dc AG, this has created opportunities to move beyond individual development projects. Experience gained in customer-specific implementations can also contribute to solutions and approaches that can be reused across similar requirements.

The result is a model in which both sides contribute their respective expertise: the Dynamics 365 partner remains close to its customers and their business processes, while Reactor provides a platform for extending those processes to mobile scenarios.

The Reactor Platform was an absolute stroke of luck. What stood out extremely positively was how customizable the app is.

— Florian Neblich, ERP Team Lead, dc AG

Why Reactor Platform for Dynamics 365 partners?

Reactor Platform can help partners expand what they offer their Dynamics 365 customers without having to build a mobile technology foundation from the ground up.

Extend Dynamics 365 into mobile processes
Bring Dynamics 365 data and workflows to employees in warehouses, production, logistics, field service, sales and other operational environments.

Support online and offline scenarios
Design applications around the conditions in which employees actually work, including processes where continuous connectivity cannot be assumed.

Build on your existing Dynamics 365 expertise
Connect mobile applications with Microsoft Dynamics 365 while retaining the business logic and processes already established in the customer's environment.

Adapt applications to individual customer requirements
Create mobile experiences around specific roles, workflows and operational scenarios rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all application.

Turn project experience into reusable solutions
Use experience from individual implementations as the basis for repeatable applications and offerings for similar customer requirements.

Keep ownership of your customer relationship
Use Reactor as a technology platform within your own Dynamics 365 offering while continuing to lead the customer relationship and solution design.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d say 9. The combination of flexibility, online/offline capability, and broad use cases is something I haven’t found elsewhere.

— Florian Neblich, ERP Team Lead, dc AG

Collaboration beyond the technology

The partnership between dc AG and BE-terna has also developed through continuous exchange.

Feedback from real customer projects provides BE-terna with insights into how Reactor is being used in practice, while dc AG can draw on the Reactor team's platform expertise when addressing new requirements.

This collaboration helps connect platform development with the realities Dynamics 365 partners encounter in customer projects.

For partners, this model can be particularly valuable when a customer requirement falls outside their existing solution portfolio: rather than developing and maintaining every technological component themselves, they can build on Reactor while concentrating their own expertise on the customer, the business process and the Dynamics 365 implementation.

From customer-specific projects to scalable offerings

For dc AG, the next step is increasingly about transforming experience from individual projects into reusable solutions.

That represents an important opportunity for Dynamics 365 partners more broadly.

A mobile requirement that first appears in one customer project may also exist across other customers or industries. A flexible platform makes it possible to use the experience, components and concepts developed in one implementation as a starting point for the next.

Instead of treating every mobile requirement as a completely new development project, partners can progressively build their own mobile solution portfolio on Reactor Platform.

For BE-terna, collaborations such as the one with dc AG demonstrate what Reactor is designed to enable: giving Dynamics 365 partners a technological foundation they can use to create mobile solutions for their customers while bringing their own industry, process and implementation expertise to the application.