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From no ERP to a unified multi-entity platform powered by Dynamics 365 Business Central

Kaskara Commodities had all their accounting outsourced and no centralized ERP system, limiting profitability visibility, slowing new legal entity onboarding, and creating heavy reliance on manual financial processes. Itransition implemented Dynamics 365 Business Central as a centralized finance system and integrated it with Kaskara’s Ignite CTRM platform, automating invoice flows and establishing audit controls that the previous setup lacked. The solution introduced standardized finance processes, data validation controls, automated monitoring of data flows, and full transaction traceability, reducing new entity onboarding time from up to eight weeks to four days.

5 entities

managed on a single platform

4 days

to onboard a new entity

1:1

invoice automation

Self-sufficient

finance operations

All technologies used

Dynamics 365 Dynamics 365 Business Central

Power Platform

Azure

Engagement model

Full project outsourcing

About the customer

Kaskara Commodities SA is a growing independent oil trading and distribution company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It focuses on supplying fuel products to African markets through a combination of global sourcing, infrastructure, and local partnerships.

Industry

Oil & Gas

Geography

Switzerland, UAE, Malta, Zambia

Company type

Private

The challenge

Kaskara’s accounting was outsourced to an external agency, which handled statutory accounting, payroll processing, and mandatory financial reporting. However, financial data was primarily organized for statutory reporting purposes and lacked the analytical dimensions required for management reporting, such as margin tracking, strategy codes, and profitability analysis. Therefore, the company’s management lacked visibility into profitability drivers and could not effectively track performance across trades, entities, or markets.

Being a fast-growing company that was opening new legal entities across multiple jurisdictions, our customer required the finance function to adapt quickly to new legal, tax, reporting, and operational requirements, often with minimal lead time. Without a centralized ERP platform and standardized templates for legal entity setup, chart of accounts, financial reporting, approval workflows, internal controls, and master data structures, the finance onboarding of a new legal entity took up to 8 weeks, becoming a standalone finance project. The absence of automation and integrated financial controls also resulted in lengthy financial close cycles - the monthly closing process commonly took 10-15 business days, limiting the company’s ability to scale and increasing their dependency on manual effort and individual knowledge.

At the operational level, the company relied on a commodity trading and risk management platform – CTRM platform, Ignite, which managed trading activities and invoice generation. However, it lacked proper controls – invoices could be deleted and regenerated with no audit trail, creating significant risks around data integrity, compliance, and financial governance.

The customer processed around 1,500–2,000 invoices annually per legal entity, with invoice volumes increasing significantly as their trading activity expanded. This was creating additional manual effort in financial processing, reconciliation, and reporting.

To address these challenges, the customer decided to have their own centralized ERP platform on top of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Recognizing the complexity of their requirements, they sought an experienced partner to design, implement, and support a scalable financial management solution aligned with their rapid expansion strategy.

The solution

At a glance

Itransition implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with a finance-first scope, integrated it with the customer’s Ignite CTRM system via REST API, and developed a custom integration log and error notification system.

A finance-first approach & multi-entity design

Kaskara’s decision to select Dynamics 365 Business Central was driven by their ambitious expansion plan to grow from one to five companies within just six months, and the solution’s widespread adoption across their industry. Business Central was a strong functional fit, providing the flexibility needed to support the customer’s objectives.

To ensure rapid time-to-value, Itransition’s experts suggested a finance-first implementation approach, establishing reliable financial processes, reporting structures, governance controls, and compliance capabilities while minimizing initial implementation complexity.

Our team deployed Dynamics 365 Business Central with a finance-focused scope, configuring the following capabilities:

  • General Ledger
  • Accounts Payable
  • Accounts Receivable
  • Bank statement posting
  • Invoicing controls
  • Financial dimensions based on Strategy + Commodity

To streamline purchase invoice processing across entities, we implemented Payables Agent – a Copilot-powered AI agent that automates the processing of vendor invoices.

To support operations across the entities in different countries, Itransition’s team designed and implemented a multi-entity architecture within Dynamics 365 Business Central. For each type of customer’s business operations, including trading and holding, we prepared standardized master data, configured tax structures and localization settings, standardized financial dimensions and reporting frameworks, and embedded financial controls. As a result, Kaskara gained the ability to onboard new entities quickly and consistently, reducing setup time from several weeks to just four days, while ensuring standardization, compliance, and scalability of its financial management framework across jurisdictions.

The implementation established a single, centralized system of record for all financial transactions across all entities, enabled real-time profitability insights, and reduced reliance on manual processes and external service providers.

Financial control through CTRM-ERP integration

To maintain continuity in trading operations while improving financial governance, Itransition integrated Dynamics 365 Business Central with the Ignite CTRM platform which Kaskara used to create and process all their invoices. The integration enabled:

  • Automated transfer of invoices into Dynamics 365 Business Central
  • Elimination of manual data entry and reconciliation efforts
  • Synchronization between operational trading data and financial accounting records

The customer’s CTRM platform's invoice lifecycle included scenarios where documents are reversed and reissued, a standard practice in commodity trading. However, Dynamics 365 Business Central follows a different posting model designed to preserve audit integrity and therefore does not support the deletion of posted invoices. To bridge this gap, our team designed an integration layer that automatically handles these scenarios through credit memo logic, ensuring the solution established a full audit trail while maintaining seamless synchronization between the two systems.

Additionally, to ensure the accuracy and consistency of financial data, our team implemented validation logic that verifies transactions against predefined accounting rules and financial dimensions before posting them to Dynamics 365 Business Central.

By preserving the customer’s existing CTRM investment while extending its capabilities through seamless connectivity with Dynamics 365 Business Central, the integration improved data quality, reduced manual processing, and increased the accuracy of financial reporting, helping finance teams process growing invoice volumes more efficiently and support faster month-end close activities.

To enable full control over the data that comes to Dynamics 365 Business Central from Ignite and visibility of transactions, Itransition developed a custom integration log and error notification system. This gave our customer the possibility to monitor all data exchanges between Ignite CTRM and Dynamics 365 Business Central, verify that invoices were successfully processed, identify failed transactions, and quickly detect missing or inconsistent data in either system.

As a result, our customer gained complete traceability of data flows between its trading and finance platforms, significantly reducing the risk of unnoticed errors and enabling faster issue resolution.

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The outcome

By implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central and standardizing finance processes across its operations, Kaskara established a strong foundation to support rapid business expansion. The solution centralized financial management, automated critical processes, and created a standardized operating model that can be replicated across new entities and jurisdictions. Kaskara saw the following results:

01

5 legal entities managed on a single platform, replacing fragmented outsourced accounting and spreadsheet-based processes

02

4 days to onboard a new entity, compared to several weeks previously, enabling faster expansion while maintaining compliance and governance

03

1:1 invoice automation between Ignite CTRM and Dynamics 365 Business Central, ensuring every invoice generated in the trading system is automatically transferred to the ERP without manual intervention

04

Full audit trail and transaction transparency, transforming uncontrolled invoice processing with no audit history into a fully traceable workflow

05

Self-sufficient finance operations without dependence on an external accounting agency, allowing Kaskara to manage accounting processes internally while maintaining full control, accuracy, and regulatory compliance