Within the last year, there have been many changes in the Microsoft Dynamics community. However, the biggest change was the introduction of Dynamics 365 Business Central, also known as the successor to Dynamics NAV. If you aren’t familiar with this platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is an end-to-end cloud ERP solution built for small to midsize businesses (SMB) that run their businesses on existing Microsoft services. The introduction of the extensions tactic for customization has been the biggest transition for NAV developers. Prior, NAV updates had mainly focused on technology and platform improvements, rather than capabilities of the application. NAV being customizable and adaptable to a customer’s business is why it is appreciated in the ERP market. The demand for cloud solutions is continuing to grow, have you implemented Business Central yet?
What is Business Central?
Dynamics 365 Business Central is the perfect solution designed to run your entire business when you reach the point of outgrowing your current software. The all-in-one solution will assist in streamlining sales, service operations, and financials. Not only that, but it will improve your customer relationships, optimize operations and gain insights with the built-in dashboards. A few key capabilities are:
Increasing financial visibility
– Be able to accelerate financial closes and reporting
– With the connected data across accounting, sales, inventory, etc., you can make informed decisions.
– With built-in Power BI dashboards, you can document financial performance in real-time, and gain in-depth analysis.
– Using comprehensive data modeling and analysis, you will be able to improve forecast accuracy.
Optimizing supply chain
– Track every item transaction and movement by creating bins with your warehouse layout. With this, you will gain a holistic view of inventory.
– Utilize sales forecasts and expected stock-outs by predicting the optimum time to replenish stock with built-in intelligence.
– Calculate and enhance manufacturing capacity and resources to improve production schedules, which in turn, meets customer demands.
– Automatically calculate stock levels, lead times, and reorder points to maintain the correct inventory.
Boost sales and service
– Prioritize sales leads based on your revenue potential by tracking customer journeys throughout the cycle.
– Quickly act on sales-related inquiries by managing service requests and accelerating the sales process – all within Outlook.
– Effectively assign resources and facilitate case resolutions with a comprehensive overview of your services.
Stay on time and under budget
– Be able to develop, modify, and control budgets to ensure project profitability by creating, managing and tracking customer projects.
– Track the invoicing for customers against planned costs on orders and quotes with being able to manage resource levels by planning capacity and sales.
– With real-time insights on project status, metrics, etc., make effective decisions.
What DOES it mean for the Dynamics Community?
Dynamics 365 Business Central provides business with both ERP and some CRM capabilities for SMB, all that integrate with Office 365. For the Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains) customers, Business Central allows a modern cloud-based ERP platform that functions similarly to GP in the past. It is a key part for the Microsoft roadmap and is continuing to grow their features. So, both existing Dynamics GP and NAV customers will be faced with difficulties related to the data migration. Our biggest piece of advice throughout this blog is to speak with your partner about what is most beneficial to your business. What is the best fit? What is the process? What is the timeline? I cannot stress this enough. Ask the right questions to make transitioning a more seamless process.
However, if you are looking for a partner that can assist you with this process, please contact us today.
